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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24600952">Sunflower Cottage</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/duchessofthemoonbase/pseuds/duchessofthemoonbase'>duchessofthemoonbase</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cottagecore: The Fic, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Grief and Healing, Imagine if The Boxcar Children and The Secret Garden had a lovechild, Only One Bed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 09:28:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,322</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24600952</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/duchessofthemoonbase/pseuds/duchessofthemoonbase</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rey ran away at age eleven, she never expected to find an abandoned cottage in the woods and make it her home—but that’s exactly what she did.</p>
<p>Ten years later, she’s happy with the simple pleasures of her life at Sunflower Cottage—but everything changes when Poe Dameron returns home to find a building on his father’s land that he never knew existed.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Poe Dameron/Rey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>230</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>98</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So I was originally outlining something super dark but my cutesy happy brain just would not let me write it. I've been spending my June days outside in a straw hat, pressing flowers in the woods and playing animal crossing: so yeah, this happened instead! :)</p>
<p>CW: Poe deals with a pretty significant amount of grief throughout this story, but particularly in this first chapter.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">
  <em>Magic and adventure only happen to orphans in storybooks.</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Well, technically, Rey wasn’t an orphan—but she may as well have been. She had two living parents, they just—well, they never quite took to the role, Rey thought, looking down at the bruises on her arm. After eleven years of living with far too much cruelty and far too little love, she had finally decided she’d had enough. She crammed what belongings she could fit into a duffel bag and started walking.</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>She already knew they wouldn’t bother going after her.</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Rey didn’t know what she was looking for, where she was going. She only knew she had to get away. And so she walked. She walked for three whole days, living off granola bars and sleeping in backyard toolsheds. She didn’t know what her stopping point was, only that she would know it when she found it. Rey didn’t know how—she would just know.</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>She had walked out of the suburbs, across the highway, through a little town, and into the depths of the forest. She walked and walked until her feet blistered, until her head ached with thirst. She kept going.</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>And then one morning she saw a burst of yellow peeking through the trees.</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>It was a single sunflower, even taller than she was, standing proudly against the ivy-covered wall of a tiny run-down cottage, sitting all alone in the woods.</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Rey remembered reading once that sunflowers needed sunshine to grow, and tended to thrive in open spaces, not in the shade of the woods—and yet this brilliant flower raised its head toward the clouds, a survivor nonetheless.</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>That was the day Rey named the place Sunflower Cottage, and realized that somehow, it had always been waiting for her.</em>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <b>
    <em>10 Years Later</em>
  </b>
</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p1">Poe Dameron watched from the window of his apartment as his classmates skipped down the street below; laughing and taking pictures with their parents in their caps and gowns. A few weeks ago, he presumed he would have been doing the same—that Kes would have driven down and cheered him on as he walked across the stage; would have taken him out to dinner after and told him he was proud—that his mom would have been proud, too.</p><p class="p1">Poe used to think it was hard having one dead parent.</p><p class="p1">Two was something else entirely.</p><p class="p1">When Poe got the call at the beginning of exam week explaining that Kes had been found dead of a sudden heart attack, he panicked. He didn’t quite process anything, only sat for five days in his apartment, eating microwave dinners and feeling something new dwelling inside him that was so heavy and yet so empty that he felt like screaming. He made mediocre but passable attempts at his last three papers and got them all in on time. He didn’t go to graduation.</p><p class="p1">He’d pick up his diploma later.</p><p class="p1">Poe’s phone rang and he groaned as he looked at the screen—it was Mr. Tarkin, Kes’s lawyer—he had been trying to contact him all week, but Poe couldn’t bear to talk about the details of his father’s legal and financial situation just yet—it was too soon to turn his dad into a pile of numbers for lawyers and accountants to dwell over.</p><p class="p1">However, this was his third call today, and it was only four o’clock. He may as well avoid pissing him off even more.</p><p class="p1">“Hello?”</p><p class="p1">“Poe Dameron? This is William Tarkin, your father’s lawyer. I am so very sorry for your loss.”</p><p class="p1">“Uh, yeah, thanks,” Poe said, holding back a yawn as he collapsed onto the couch.</p><p class="p1">“Are you familiar with the contents of your father’s will?”</p><p class="p1">“I…I guess? I think everything goes to me, right?”</p><p class="p1">“Yes. Yes, of course. However…”</p><p class="p1">Poe straightened up. “However what?”</p><p class="p1">“There’s not as much money as would be expected…after paying for NYU, Kes didn’t have much when he died except the Connecticut property.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh,” Poe said.</p><p class="p1">“I know,” Tarkin said. “It is disappointing, but you should be able to get a significant amount of money from selling it. I would advise you to drive up and take a look at it as soon as possible—with a few renovations, you could sell it for a high price.”</p><p class="p1">“Got it,” Poe said, staring out the window. “Thanks.”</p><p class="p1">“Of course,” Mr. Tarkin said. “And again, I truly am sorry.”</p><p class="p1">Poe hung up and laid back down on the couch, his brain fuzzy and numb with grief. He could still hear the whoops and cheers from his classmates outside.</p><p class="p1">He placed a pillow over his face and screamed.</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Rey treasured mornings. She always woke up two hours before she had to go work at Skywalker’s Grocery, giving her plenty of time to breathe and take in the day before she was stuck under the fluorescent lights of the store aisles for eight hours. It was her time and her time alone, and if she slept through it she ended up inconsolably cranky for the remainder of the day.</p><p class="p1">She stepped out into one of the first warm days of late March, smiling at the new wildflowers beginning to sprout up at her feet. The dreary months of winter were finally over, and now began the time when her life at Sunflower Cottage was at its finest—when violets would find their way through the cracks in the floorboards and the vegetable garden would be bursting with abundance. She would no longer have to worry about keeping warm through the heavy New England snows, and there was always extra money from doing yard work for some of the older folks in town. It was the time of year when her home became truly alive, and so, in turn, did she.</p><p class="p1">Rey smiled as she felt Bea curl around her leg, the little orange cat meowing up at her as if she was voicing her agreement.</p><p class="p1">“I know, Bea-Bea,” she said, looking out across the sunlit woods. “Isn’t it marvelous?”</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Poe pulled into the driveway of the Connecticut house, wondering how it always managed to look slightly different in reality to how it presented itself in his memories. It was indisputably gorgeous, an impressive four-bedroom colonial with a wide front porch, but it was the acres and acres of forest surrounding the house that would put it at a high selling point.</p><p class="p1">Poe took a deep breath as he turned the key in the door and walked inside, almost surprised at the silence, the empty sound where there should have been his father’s laugh; the smell of his cooking. But there was no one.</p><p class="p1">Instead what Poe found was a life interrupted. His father had died in his chair in the living room, and everything in the house was paused as he left it—the haunting, cruelly ironic vestiges of a man who had no idea he was on course to disappear forever. His grocery list for next week was on the table, his still-steeping green tea forgotten on the counter. It looked as if Kes was due back any minute.</p><p class="p1">Except he wasn’t coming back.</p><p class="p1">Poe sunk to the floor and held his head in his hands. <em>Breathe, breathe, breathe.</em></p><p class="p1">To be honest, Poe had never been very familiar with the Connecticut house. It had belonged to Kes’s father, and Poe had lived here for the first five years of his life, until his mother got sick. They had spent almost everything they had on Shara’s cancer treatment, and so after she passed, Kes and Poe downsized to an apartment and rented out the Connecticut property to an older woman. When she died right before Poe left for college, Kes decided to take the opportunity to move back in, saying he was “an old man who deserved some fresh air”—so besides a few scattered childhood memories and breaks home from college, Poe didn’t really know the house at all.</p><p class="p1">He spent the next few hours listening to podcasts on his phone and wandering around the house, pacing in circles. He didn’t have the heart to clean anything yet; or to plan anything either. Every task he had related to his father felt as if it would be too early to complete or already too late. He had a small funeral to plan, relatives from out of town to write, but he couldn’t bear to do any of it.</p><p class="p1">Poe groaned as he walked outside to the porch. He had been out of college for less than a week. He should be celebrating, planning for his future, anything, <em>anything</em> but this. All his friends were somewhere else, in the city or back in their hometowns. He hadn’t even told any of them about his father—he didn’t feel like spoiling anyone’s last week of college, or seeing anyone, either.</p><p class="p1">It finally began to hit him that he was very much alone in the world.</p><p class="p1">With this sobering thought, Poe began to walk.</p><p class="p1">The afternoon was just fading into evening as he began to wander into the woods that stretched beyond the house—he had never really gone back here, as most of his outdoor time as a child had been relegated to the porch and the basketball hoop Shara put up in the driveway. But the trees ahead of him looked peaceful and dark, and something about them drew him in.</p><p class="p1">Poe didn’t know what he was looking for, where he was going. He only knew he had to get away. And so he walked.</p><p class="p1">He felt numb. He felt angry. He felt like the emptiness he now carried was about to sink him into the ground. And so he kept going.</p><p class="p1">And then he saw it.</p><p class="p1">There was a tiny cottage just around the bend, covered in ivy and wildflowers. A vegetable garden was planted out front, and various tools and antiques were scattered across the yard. A tiny orange cat meowed at him from where it sat curled up in a flower pot.</p><p class="p1">Poe circled around the house—if you could even call it that, he thought—bewildered. His father had never mentioned that there was another building on their land. The garden looked freshly tended, but surely no one could <em>live </em>here, he thought. The space inside the cottage must be barely larger than his freshman dorm room.</p><p class="p1">He took a deep breath and knocked on the door—and to his surprise, someone opened it.</p><p class="p1">A girl about his age stood in the doorway wearing colorfully-patched overalls, her bright hazel eyes assessing Poe with curiosity. “Can I help you?” she asked.</p><p class="p1">“Yeah, um,” Poe said. “Do you live here?”</p><p class="p1">The girl crossed her arms. “And what is it to you?”</p><p class="p1">“I own this land, actually,” Poe said. “And as far as I know, you’ve never paid any rent.”</p><p class="p1">She laughed. “No you don’t. This land belongs to the old widower who lives in that big old house down that way,” The girl said, pointing behind him. “So I don’t think my housing situation is any of your business.”</p><p class="p1">“Actually it is,” Poe said. “I’m his son, and he died last week, and so now this land, as well as anything on it, belongs to me—so you living here rent free is <em>absolutely</em> my business.”</p><p class="p1">The girl paled as she looked him over. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. “But you have no right to speak to me that way.”</p><p class="p1">Poe scoffed. “In what way? I’m not the one mooching off of someone’s land!”</p><p class="p1">The girl shook her head. “Unbelievable. As if you’re even using it. You didn’t even know anything was here!”</p><p class="p1">“Well I know now,” Poe snapped. “And you need to be paying something to live here. Starting in April, I want a thousand dollars a month.”</p><p class="p1">“Excuse me?”</p><p class="p1">“Oh, <em>I’m sorry</em>,” Poe mocked. “What entitles you to not have to pay rent like everyone else on this planet does? As far as I know you’ve been taking advantage of my father for years.”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t make enough to pay that,” she said. “I only have a job at Skywalker’s Grocery. I can’t afford it.”</p><p class="p1">“Okay then,” Poe said. “Then you have to leave.”</p><p class="p1">The girl slammed the door in his face.</p><p class="p1">Poe grumbled and turned away to walk home, the little orange cat hissing at him as he made his way through the garden.</p><p class="p1">What were the five stages of grief again? Denial, and then…</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Oh yeah.</em>
</p><p class="p1">Maybe he had been a bit too harsh.</p><p>
  
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  
</p><p class="p1">Rey’s first instinct when she was angry was always to do repair work—to have a hammer or screwdriver in hand to keep her busy, to pound nails instead of her fists—so that was what she did. A minute after that insufferable prick left, she’d gotten out her toolbox and got to work patching up the new leak that had sprung up on the roof.</p><p class="p1">She could still see that obnoxious look on his face, the sneer he’d made as he looked at the way she was living—he clearly pitied her, and yet he still wanted her to pay a thousand dollars a month. <em>A thousand?</em> The cottage didn’t have heat, air conditioning, or plumbing, and there was hardly enough room for one person. He was greedy, she decided. Greedy, and unfeeling, and—</p><p class="p1">Rey thought of the cardboard box hidden under one of the floorboards. <em>Those curls...was it possible that…</em></p><p class="p1"><em>No</em>, she decided. She refused to feel anything but scorn for that man. Rey imagined punching him right in his ugly—</p><p class="p1">Except he wasn’t ugly—in fact he was unfairly nice to look at, and this somehow made her even angrier.</p><p class="p1">Rey sighed as she stepped down to examine her work, and finding it satisfactory, grabbed one of the old science textbooks from the stack on the floor and sat down on her bed to read. The local library was one of Rey’s few sources of entertainment—that and an old cassette player. Since she’d graduated high school a few years ago, she’d been spending hours each week devouring as many science books as she could so she would be prepared when she finally could afford college.</p><p class="p1">Rey sunk her head in her hands as she thought about the obstacles in front of her—the thousand and one things that were constantly endeavoring to keep her from one day becoming an accomplished biologist. She could still hear the polite laugh of the man she’d talked to at the bank when she showed him what she had in savings, the way he’d quirked his eyebrow at her demeaningly. “Well,” he’d said. “I suppose this might be enough for textbooks.”</p><p class="p1">It was only just recently that Rey had begun questioning just how good her life actually was. For so long, she had only thought of survival—to be independent and safe was enough. But now that she was settled in her routine, the thoughts began to creep in—the dreams. College and indoor plumbing and friends and romance and all the things that most people her age simply took for granted. Was she really going to live like this forever?</p><p class="p1">If the man who knocked on her door meant what he said, she was going to have to leave—and she would have to figure out where she belonged, fast.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p1">Poe was trying very hard to forget what happened.</p><p class="p1">He crashed in front of the tv as soon as he got back inside, sinking into the couch cushions with shame. Of course he had named a ridiculous rent price (one that, to be fair, would have been very good in New York) and made himself look like a complete dick—asking for an unfair amount of money from a girl who looked like she didn’t have anywhere else to go.</p><p class="p1">A <em>cute</em> girl. One with sparkling eyes and a quick wit and a pretty splash of pink on her cheeks when she rightfully called him out on his bullshit—and he had made her hate him. He didn’t have a single friend in Connecticut, and this girl would have been a good place to start, had he not been such a complete idiot.</p><p class="p1">So that night, he made up his mind. He was going to try and make things right.</p><p class="p1">…And this is what found Poe Dameron walking through the woods with a giant plastic bag full of tech equipment at nine o’clock the next morning. He had gotten up at the crack of dawn, made himself a ridiculously huge breakfast of bacon and eggs, and rushed off toward the cottage.</p><p class="p1">He found himself wondering about this girl as he walked along. How, exactly, did someone their age end up living alone in the middle of the woods? Kes would have never allowed him to live all alone like that, so he guessed her family situation wasn’t ideal. However she had ended up there, he thought, it couldn’t have been good.</p><p class="p1">When Poe reached the cottage, he found the the girl outside, digging around in the huge vegetable garden. She wore a long, tattered skirt and a denim jacket, and was pulling out weeds with a vengeance.</p><p class="p1">The second she looked up at him, he heard her audibly groan.</p><p class="p1">“I come in peace,” Poe said, holding his hands up. “I swear.”</p><p class="p1">The girl continued weeding in silence.</p><p class="p1">“Look,” Poe said. “I just wanted to apologize for how I acted the other day. I’m still kind of reeling from my dad’s death—not that it’s any excuse—and I lashed out without thinking. It was really stupid, and I’m an asshole, and—”</p><p class="p1">She dug a shovel into the ground, still refusing to make eye contact.</p><p class="p1">“I’m Poe, by the way,” he said. “Poe Dameron.”</p><p class="p1">“Have you come to collect your rent or to kick me out?” she snapped. “Either way, I’d prefer if you’d get it over with.”</p><p class="p1">Poe scratched his head nervously. “No, I uh—I came to set up wifi, presuming you don’t already have it.”</p><p class="p1">“Doesn’t matter,” the girl said, rolling her eyes. “Got nothing to use it for, anyway.”</p><p class="p1">Poe pulled a dusty blue laptop out of his bag. “Not anymore.”</p><p class="p1">The girl looked up in shock. “You bought me a laptop?”</p><p class="p1">“It’s—it was my dad’s,” Poe explained. “He obviously doesn’t need it anymore, so…”</p><p class="p1">She was still staring at him. It wasn’t the reception he had hoped for, one with a hug and an invitation inside the cottage for beers—it was pure suspicion.</p><p class="p1">“What are you up to?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”</p><p class="p1">“I feel terrible about how I yelled at you and so I wanted to make it up,” he said. “My dad had a lot of stuff that needs a new home, and—”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t like to be pitied.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m—I’m not pitying you, I just—”</p><p class="p1">“Then what?” the girl said, standing up to face him. She was nearly his height. “People have treated me like a charity case my whole life, and I’m sick of it—really sick of it.”</p><p class="p1">“Well to be <em>honest</em>,” Poe said. “There’s a sticky note on the keyboard with my Netflix password, and I <em>really </em>need someone to discuss my <em>Avatar: The Last Airbender</em> rewatch with, and I thought maybe…”</p><p class="p1">She broke into a smile, and Poe beamed. <em>Gotcha,</em> he thought.</p><p class="p1">“I can’t accept this,” she said. “It’s too much.”</p><p class="p1">“No, please.”</p><p class="p1">“It’s too much.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m damn serious about the <em>Avatar</em> thing though.”</p><p class="p1">The girl laughed again. “I’m Rey.”</p><p class="p1">“Nice to meet you, Rey,” Poe said. “And um, in retrospect I’ve realized that a thousand a month is a bit excessive for um…” he gestured vaguely at the cottage. “Ummm..”</p><p class="p1">“You think?” Rey snarked.</p><p class="p1">“Hey,” Poe said. “I’ve been living in New York, that’s cheap there. I’ll look into getting you a more reasonable price, promise.”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah, yeah.”</p><p class="p1">“So,” Poe asked. “You have a plug inside right? So I can set the wifi up?”</p><p class="p1">Rey looked taken aback. “Yeah, yeah, I do, just um…yeah, let’s see.”</p><p class="p1">She seemed a bit taken aback by the idea of letting someone in, and Poe realized that guests were probably a rarity here.</p><p class="p1">Nonetheless, Rey held the door open for him and he ducked inside.</p><p class="p1">Poe smiled as he walked in the door—the interior was about the size of a large bedroom, and every inch of it had been put to some sort of use. There was a sink and a hot plate near the door, and under the sink were jars of preserves and an old-fashioned washboard and tub. Next to it were two rusty tv tables covered in a calico tablecloth. In the corner was an old mattress spread over with a granny-square blanket, where the orange cat who had hissed at him the other day watched him with careful eyes. The entire space was covered in old lost and found treasures that looked like they were either homemade or found at yard sales: dried flowers and sketches, cracked pottery and china figurines—next to the bed there was a homemade rag doll dressed as a world war two pilot. It felt like home in a way he couldn’t explain.</p><p class="p1">“The plug is over here,” Rey said, pointing behind the table and breaking Poe out of his reverie.</p><p class="p1">“Got it,” Poe said, kneeling down to start to set up the modem. He looked at the end of the bed, where huge stacks of advanced science textbooks were piled up. “Are you a student?” he asked.</p><p class="p1">“No, not yet,” Rey answered. “I’m studying to <em>become</em> a student, I suppose.”</p><p class="p1">“How old are you?”</p><p class="p1">“Twenty-one.”</p><p class="p1">“Just a year younger than me,” Poe said. “I just wrapped up school at NYU.”</p><p class="p1">“Must be nice,” Rey said. “I’ve been saving up but it feels like I’ll never get there.”</p><p class="p1">Poe ducked his head farther under the table. His dad had paid his way through school, and he’d never had to think about it twice. “You know,” he said. “Once you have the computer set up you can look into applying for scholarships.”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t know,” Rey said. “Not sure I’m smart enough.”</p><p class="p1">“I disagree,” Poe said, pointing to her books. “If you care enough to read all those books in your free time, you are. Most people are just going to college to get a piece of paper—if you really care, they’ll be able to tell.”</p><p class="p1">Rey smiled weakly, as if she didn’t quite believe him, and Poe continued fiddling with the wires.</p><p class="p1">“What’s the cat’s name?” he asked.</p><p class="p1">“Bea,” she replied. “Or Bea-Bea. It’s short for Beatrice.”</p><p class="p1">“Why Beatrice?”</p><p class="p1">“Oh,” Rey said, blushing. “She was um—well, when I found her she was hissing at some crows in the woods, and—you know, never mind—”</p><p class="p1">Poe just smiled. “I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.”</p><p class="p1">Rey smiled in surprise. “You know <em>Much Ado About Nothing?”</em></p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” Poe said, opening the laptop. “Saw a rather half-hearted production of it last year at school.”</p><p class="p1">Rey stuck her head out the window. “It smells,” she said.</p><p class="p1">“What?”</p><p class="p1">“It smells like something’s burning.”</p><p class="p1">Poe shrugged. “Probably just someone having a cookout. Okay—looks like I got it working. The password is ‘Beatrice’.”</p><p class="p1">Rey took the laptop from him and carefully dragged her finger across the trackpad. “Wow,” she said. “There’s actual, proper internet and everything.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh, ye of little faith,” Poe teased. “You’re welcome.”</p><p class="p1">Rey gave him a mock grimace, and then Poe realized he didn’t really have a reason to be there anymore. He didn’t know this girl, but he <em>wanted</em> to, wanted to understand the many mysteries of how she ended up here, wanted to hear the stories behind every knick-knack and treasure in the place—but he had to go.</p><p class="p1">“I’ll um,” Poe said, waving awkwardly. “I’ll see you around.”</p><p class="p1">“Thanks,” Rey said, absorbed in waving a piece of yarn in front of Bea. “See you.”</p><p class="p1">Poe walked out the door and back into the sunshine, turning around every few seconds to look back at the cottage—thinking of this strange, beautiful, inexplicable girl who called it a home. He wished he could tell his dad about it—he imagined sitting across from him at dinner, his dad laughing at the awful first impression he had given her. “You always had such charm with the ladies, mijo,” he would say.</p><p class="p1">God, he missed him.</p><p class="p1">Poe crinkled his nose as he walked farther through the woods back towards his house. Rey was right—it did smell like something was burning—and the thin veil of smoke that had appeared was getting thicker as he walked along.</p><p class="p1">Poe stepped out of the woods and stopped in his tracks.</p><p class="p1">His house was on fire.</p><p>
  
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>ohmyGOD THEY WERE ROOMMATES?!?!???</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  
</p><p class="p1">Poe sat quietly on the lawn, watching as firefighters hosed down the last flames dancing on the edges of what was once his house—what was once the one thing that would keep him safe until he figured something out.</p><p class="p1">It was a shell of itself.</p><p class="p1">The fire had ravaged through the wooden frame of the old house with unforgiving speed, and given that the home was in the middle of nowhere, it had taken a half hour for someone biking past to notice and call the fire department. The house had been completely gutted, with only the fireplace and the area where the dining room was still standing.</p><p class="p1">The loss was surreal, as it had been in those first few hours after Kes had died—and here he was, watching the remains of his home crumble before his eyes, and he still didn’t quite believe it.</p><p class="p1">A gruff-looking fireman approached him. “You cook breakfast this morning?”</p><p class="p1">Poe thought back to earlier, when he had made himself a massive breakfast before heading off to the cottage. “Um, yeah.”</p><p class="p1">“That looks to be the cause,” the firefighter said. “Burner left on, towel or something probably fell on it,” he sighed. “I’m sorry, kid. Do you know when your parents get back so I can go over some stuff with them?”</p><p class="p1">Poe felt a lump swell up in his throat. “It’s just me, actually. You can tell me.”</p><p class="p1">“Wow,” he said, looking impressed. “You’re pretty young to have a nice place like this all to yourself.”</p><p class="p1">Poe smiled weakly and followed the man back to the remains of the house. <em>Don’t cry, don’t cry, just hold it together for ten more minutes, Dameron. Please.</em></p><p class="p1">His mother was dead. His father was dead. His house burns to ashes.</p><p class="p1">He’d be a fool to think life was fair at this point.</p><p class="p1">The firefighter gave him a hard hat and walked with him through the house. Nearly everything was damaged beyond repair—just piles of burnt wood and melted objects that were beyond recognition. He was almost glad his father wasn’t here to see it.</p><p class="p1">“I, um,” Poe said. “I was planning on selling, actually. Do you know what the value of the house would be…in this condition?”</p><p class="p1">“A tear-down, to be honest,” the firefighter said. “Sorry, kid.”</p><p class="p1">Well, Poe thought, at least there was still the land to sell. It wouldn’t be much, but it might be enough. He’d be okay. <em>Breathe, breathe, breathe.</em></p><p class="p1">Poe turned to the corner of what was once the living room, looking at the empty space where the family albums and boxes of Shara’s things used to be.</p><p class="p1"><em>Fuck,</em> Poe thought, starting to cry from what felt more like anger at himself than anything else. <em>Fuck, fuck, fuck. Anything but those pictures, please, no, please.</em></p><p class="p1">“It’s okay,” the firefighter said, patting Poe on the back. “It’s very overwhelming to see. It’s a shock. You’re just in a bit of shock. It’ll be okay.”</p><p class="p1">Poe made his way over to the dining room, the one part of the building that remained unscathed besides scorch marks on the walls. “I guess I’ll buy a sleeping bag and stay in here tonight,” he groaned.</p><p class="p1">“Oh no you’re not,” the firefighter scolded. “What’s left of this structure could fall on your head. Not to mention the fumes, and—look, you can’t stay here kid. You’re going to have to get a hotel.”</p><p class="p1">Poe had an empty bank account, no way to access his father’s money, and maybe a couple of twenties in his wallet.</p><p class="p1">This was going to be a problem.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">Okay. She admitted it. He wasn’t <em>that</em> horrible of a person.</p><p class="p1">It was nice of him to come back and apologize. But still, she hated how he visited with the intention of making a better second impression and of course, the charming bastard had done it. Perhaps she was a bit of a sore loser.</p><p class="p1">However, she was now a sore loser who could finally watch all those movies and shows her coworkers at the grocery store were always shocked to hear she hadn’t seen—and that didn’t count for nothing.</p><p class="p1">Rey sat carefully at the table with the new laptop, logging on to the email account that she hadn’t checked since the last time she’d used the computer at the library a month ago. She’d never really experienced the internet beyond the bare essentials—rushed high school assignments after school and looking up what plants were in season. But now she was uncovering the rest of it: Twitter, Netflix, Tumblr, Youtube…</p><p class="p1">Three hours somehow passed in the blink of an eye. She didn’t even notice until she heard the knock on the door.</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Him? Again?</em>
</p><p class="p1">Rey opened the door and sure enough it was Poe, looking dirty, disheveled, and like he’d just lost a fight.</p><p class="p1">“Hey,” Rey said, looking at him suspiciously. “What happened?”</p><p class="p1">“So uh,” Poe said, scratching his head. He looked as if he was trying his best not to cry. “You know how I’ve had a really shitty month? With my dad dying and everything? Well—my house sort of—just burned down.”</p><p class="p1">“What? You’ve got to be kidding me.”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah. It’s pretty much—um, gone,” he said, looking down.</p><p class="p1">“Oh god,” Rey said, unsure of how to comfort him. Halfway through starting to feel terrible for him, she had a disturbing inkling as to why he had showed up at her door.</p><p class="p1">“So, the thing is,” he said. “I have—nothing. I have nowhere to sleep, no money on hand, nowhere to go, I’m kind of freaking out, so I was wondering if maybe…?”</p><p class="p1">Rey sighed. <em>Fuck.</em></p><p class="p1">“Sorry, I mean, I can’t imagine what’s going through your head right now, and after me being such an asshole, and—”</p><p class="p1">“You can stay…” she said with a hint of mischief. “…on one condition.”</p><p class="p1">“You know,” Poe said. “Technically this is my property, so...”</p><p class="p1">“You better not finish that sentence,” she snapped.</p><p class="p1">Poe was silenced, and waited.</p><p class="p1">“You can stay,” Rey said. “But, if you stay here, I don’t want to pay any rent while you still own this land. I need every cent of it for college.”</p><p class="p1">Poe sighed. “Okay.”</p><p class="p1">“Okay?” Rey asked. “You’re not even going to argue?”</p><p class="p1">“I mean…” Poe said. “This barely even qualifies as a house, so…it’s a little unfair to charge you rent for it, I guess.”</p><p class="p1">Rey rolled her eyes and opened the door. “Fine. But you respect Sunflower Cottage while you’re here, got it?”</p><p class="p1">“Yes ma’am,” he said. “Sunflower Cottage…I like that.”</p><p class="p1">Rey blushed, and Bea came over and nudged Poe’s hand with her tiny head as he walked in. “At least your cat doesn’t hate me anymore.”</p><p class="p1">Rey crossed her arms. “I wouldn’t presume.”</p><p class="p1">She was suddenly faced with the terrifying prospect of spending weeks inside the cottage with him. It was barely large enough for one person to live comfortably, but <em>two?</em> Especially when it came to two people who weren’t particularly fond of each other.</p><p class="p1">“In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t the Ritz,” Rey deadpanned, beginning to point around the room. “The metal tub is for washing up and laundry. The hot plate can be plugged in for cooking and tea, and the rest of the food is in cans under here. The little closet in the wall there has a toilet, and you wash your hands in the sink.”</p><p class="p1">“Cool,” Poe said, looking around with genuine admiration. “It’s really neat how you figured all this out.”</p><p class="p1">“One last thing,” Rey said, pulling out what looked like a large woven cloth from under the bed. He watched as she hung it from two hooks in the ceiling. “It’s a hammock. You sleep here.”</p><p class="p1">“Yes ma’am,” Poe said. He looked at the ceiling dubiously. “Are you sure that’s gonna hold?”</p><p class="p1">Rey scoffed. “Well it better, for your sake, because the bed is mine.”</p><p class="p1">He nodded. “Got it.”</p><p class="p1">Rey looked at him, his face still red from crying, a hint of soot still dusted across his cheeks. She figured she was being rather callous towards him considering he’d just lost nearly all of his earthly possessions.</p><p class="p1">And, she supposed, if they were going to be rooming in close quarters, she may as well <em>try </em>to get along with him.</p><p class="p1">“How about I make us some dinner?”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” Poe said, still in a bit of a daze. “Can I help?”</p><p class="p1">“There’s not much to do,” Rey said. He watched carefully from the corner of the room as she boiled water in an old rose-patterned tea-kettle and poured it into little cups of instant macaroni and cheese. Then she washed two apples.</p><p class="p1">Poe sat at the little table and Rey sat on the bed, the two of them eating in terse silence.</p><p class="p1">“This is actually a really nice dinner,” Poe said.</p><p class="p1">“Ha-ha.”</p><p class="p1">“No,” he said. “I mean it. It reminds me of the lunches my mom used to make me when I was a kid.”</p><p class="p1">“That’s sweet,” Rey said, and looking at him she realized just how on the verge of breaking down he was.</p><p class="p1">“I, um,” Poe said. “I lost everything I had of my mom today. All the pictures of her, all her old things…they’re gone. All because I left a stupid fucking towel on the burner, I just—I lost everything I had left of her. Just like that.”</p><p class="p1"><em>Maybe</em> you did, Rey thought, thinking of her earlier theory, but this wasn’t the time to bring up her suspicions. Besides, selfishly, she wanted to keep her to herself a little bit longer. There would be time.</p><p class="p1">Poe held his face in one hand and closed a fist in the other. Rey didn’t know what to say—she wasn’t used to comforting other people and feared she might somehow make it worse.</p><p class="p1">“I really am sorry,” Rey said. “I don’t know what I can say to make it better. Just—just tell me what I can do.”</p><p class="p1">Poe sighed. “Can we maybe just…watch a movie or something? I’d like to forget what happened for two hours.”</p><p class="p1">“Sure,” Rey said. “You said you wanted to watch that thing? The other day?”</p><p class="p1">“<em>Avatar.”</em> Poe said. “Let’s do it.”</p><p class="p1">Rey pulled up Netflix on the laptop with a new ease, and pulled up the first episode.</p><p class="p1">“Have you seen it before?” Poe asked.</p><p class="p1">Rey looked at him incredulously. “With what tv?”</p><p class="p1">“Fair,” he said. “You’re in for a treat.”</p><p class="p1">Now there was the question of how they were going to arrange themselves for the viewing, and silently they settled on what was really their sole comfortable option—the two of them sitting on opposite sides of Rey’s bed while they perched the laptop on the table. The sunlight outside had started to fade, and so Rey lit the ancient-looking kerosene lamp in the corner, casting a warm and haunting glow over the room.</p><p class="p1">Poe hit play and Rey settled into the story, listening to Katara tell of the long-ago days before the fire nation attacked. There was about two feet of space between them, two feet that seemed charged with a sort of electricity, as if something would happen if she budged an inch in that direction.</p><p class="p1">“Are you liking it?” Poe asked.</p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” Rey said, smiling, and this answer seemed to please him. He still looked numb, and tired, but the cartoon playing in front of them seemed to lull him into a more stable sort of calm. This came as a relief to Rey, who didn’t know how to handle loss—she’d never really had anything to lose, after all.</p><p class="p1">They sat through five whole episodes, both of them still a little tense; apprehensive of looking in any other direction besides the screen.</p><p class="p1">“I think I’m ready to sleep,” Rey said.</p><p class="p1">“You usually go to bed at nine o’clock?”</p><p class="p1">“Yep,” she replied. “The light in here isn’t great so I try to wake up and sleep with the sun for the most part.”</p><p class="p1">“Gotcha,” Poe said. “That makes sense. I’m pretty tired myself, after today.”</p><p class="p1">“I would expect so,” Rey said, and fished through a box to find a spare toothbrush. She then found a large pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that she expected would work for him as pajamas.</p><p class="p1">“Thanks,” Poe said, looking into her eyes as he accepted the stack of clothes. “I mean it. I can’t imagine letting a stranger into your home is easy.”</p><p class="p1">“It’s fine,” she replied. “It’s nice to have company, actually.”</p><p class="p1">They realized at about the same time that they would both have to change into their pajamas, and as the closet with the toilet barely had enough room to stand up in, the main room was really their only option.</p><p class="p1">“Um,” Rey stammered out. “How about I turn this way and you turn that way?”</p><p class="p1">“Sounds good.”</p><p class="p1">Rey turned toward the bed, slipping off her skirt and panties and replacing them with her pajama bottoms as quickly as possible. Then she removed her jacket and tank top and slipped on the t-shirt she liked to sleep in. <em>Done</em>, she thought, turning around without thinking, and—</p><p class="p1">“Oh!” Rey gasped, shielding her eyes. “Sorry, sorry, I assumed you were finished.”</p><p class="p1">“Don’t worry about it,” Poe said, and Rey turned around to hide her blush. She’d seen him standing there in only his boxers, his muscled chest and arms glowing golden and smooth under the lamplight—</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Shit.</em>
</p><p class="p1">“Well,” Poe said, now fully dressed. “Ready for me to turn the light out?”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” Rey said. “Goodnight, Poe.”</p><p class="p1">“Goodnight,” he said, and in the darkness she could hear him settling into the hammock. It only took twenty minutes or so for her to hear him snoring lightly as she lay awake in the dark, Bea jumping up on the bed to cuddle up next to her.</p><p class="p1"><em>There was another person here</em>, she thought, staring up at the ceiling. If she dreamt something wonderful, she’d have someone to tell in the morning. If she disappeared, someone would wonder where she had gone off to.</p><p class="p1">It felt good.</p><p>
  
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  
</p><p class="p1">Poe stretched out in the hammock, the memories from the day before slowly resurfacing—and then his eyes took in the sunlight creeping through the window, the low ceilings, the—</p><p class="p1"><em>Oh yeah,</em> he remembered, his heart sinking. <em>The house is gone.</em></p><p class="p1">But he wasn’t surprised to see Rey already up, spreading what looked liked strawberry jam on slices of baguette.</p><p class="p1">“Hi,” Poe murmured, and she smiled at him.</p><p class="p1">“Sleep well?”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” Poe said. The hammock wasn’t the most comfortable bed in the world, but after the emotional exhaustion of yesterday, he could have slept anywhere.</p><p class="p1">“Breakfast is almost ready,” Rey said, setting the bread on the little table along with a bowl of fruit and two chipped tea cups.</p><p class="p1">“You don’t have to do this,” Poe said. “It’s nice enough that you’re letting me invade your space.”</p><p class="p1">“The food isn’t great,” she admitted. “Really—Luke lets me take stuff they can’t sell at the store— the stale bread and deformed fruit and so on, so don’t be—”</p><p class="p1">“It’s amazing, Rey,” he said, smiling at her, and Poe could of sworn she blushed a little. They took their seats at the table, even Bea, who dashed inside when she heard the sound of her dry food clattering into the bowl at Rey’s feet.</p><p class="p1">“My goodness, Miss Beatrice,” Rey scolded, scratching behind her ears. “You’re getting so fat these days, no?”</p><p class="p1">The window by the table looked out into the garden, and only now did Poe notice the tiny bird feeder set up next to the window. As he watched cardinals and chickadees flit back and forth, he realized that he was…well, he was absurdly calm for someone who had lost everything he had less than twenty-four hours ago.</p><p class="p1">“I never do this,” Poe said, breaking their silence.</p><p class="p1">“Do what?”</p><p class="p1">“Breakfast,” he replied. “I mean, I’ll get a pop tart or something, or have a bowl of cereal, but not…” he looked around at the simple but lovingly put-together spread in front of him. “But not as if it’s something that’s supposed to matter, you know what I mean?”</p><p class="p1">“I do,” Rey said. “Occasionally I’ve overslept and had to rush to work with a granola bar, and those days never seem to turn out well for me.” She smiled out the window, the sunlight highlighting the different shades in her brown hair. “I’ve always believed that if you treat yourself nicely in the morning, the rest of the day will tend to follow.”</p><p class="p1">Poe looked around the room, brilliant in the sunlight, and picked up all sorts of details he hadn’t noticed before—like the tiny spring beauties and violets placed in an empty nail polish bottle filled with water, or the pages of handwritten notes up on the wall that detailed the history of Rey’s vegetable garden. Nothing was ever wasted here, and everything had its use.</p><p class="p1">And God, he still had a lot of questions.</p><p class="p1">But could he even ask? From what he could tell from the inside of the cottage (the lack of pictures, of mementos, of evidence of any kind of life outside of its door) he assumed that most of his questions would be uncomfortable for her to answer.</p><p class="p1">“So, um,” Poe said. “What do you usually do on the weekends?”</p><p class="p1">Rey scrunched her face endearingly in thought. “Hm…” she said. “I guess I usually garden, or read, or go hiking.”</p><p class="p1">“And today?”</p><p class="p1">She smiled, as if suddenly remembering that she now had to factor Poe into her plans. “I suppose I could show you one of my favorite hiking trails.”</p><p class="p1">“I’d like that.”</p><p class="p1">He watched as Rey laced up her sneakers and found two small burlap pouches to carry on her wrist. “Mushrooms and herbs,” Rey said, holding one up, “and flowers to press,” signaling to the other.</p><p class="p1">Poe followed her out the door and up the hill behind the cottage, stunned at how softly and naturally Rey walked through the woods, how alert and bright her eyes were at every plant under their feet, every deer that meandered by.</p><p class="p1">Once they reached the top of the hill the land flattened out again, their path running parallel to a creek below. It was more shallow near the cottage, but as they walked on it grew more impressive, probably wide and deep enough to swim in.</p><p class="p1">Poe slowed down when Rey did, watching with fascination as she stopped to kneel down and examine tiny flowers or mushrooms growing on the side of a tree, occasionally collecting them in one of her bags. He watched as she carefully picked a dozen mushrooms from under the shadow of a fallen tree.</p><p class="p1">“Dinner tonight,” Rey said, holding the bag up in victory.</p><p class="p1">“So, um,” Poe said. “You <em>are</em> sure those aren’t…like…”</p><p class="p1">“They’re just morels, relax,” Rey assured him. “I eat them all the time.”</p><p class="p1">Poe was still dubious, but he decided he’d rather risk a gruesome death by accidental poisoning than start up another argument with her. He followed Rey quietly along the path, continuing their walk in complete silence. What would Poe ask her, anyway? How did you converse with someone who didn’t have a past?</p><p class="p1">“We should probably head back now,” Rey said, turning around, and Poe followed after her. He watched as she made her way down a steep incline, and once she had reached the bottom, she waited for Poe to do the same.</p><p class="p1">“You don’t have to wait for me,” he said assuredly from above her. “I know what I’m—”</p><p class="p1">Poe gasped as his toe hit the edge of a tree root, his body went flying forward, and before he knew it, Rey had caught him in her arms.</p><p class="p1">“Um,” Poe practically squeaked, his face flushing at the feeling of Rey’s arms around him. “You’re stronger than I thought.”</p><p class="p1">She grinned, reveling in Poe’s deer-in-the-headlights expression. “You’re awfully lucky I was here to save you, fair maiden.”</p><p class="p1">“Hey,” Poe countered as he stood up and backed out of her arms, albeit a bit reluctantly. “I can handle myself, thank you very much.”</p><p class="p1">“Really?” Rey asked. “Because not too long ago you were very scared of…” she reached into her bag and smirked. “…this itty bitty mushroom.”</p><p class="p1">“Well, excuse me if I want to live to see tomorrow’s dinner.”</p><p class="p1">“Please,” Rey said. “I know what I’m doing. I promise that if I poison you it will be entirely deliberate.”</p><p class="p1">“How comforting,” Poe said.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p1">There were still a few hours until Rey had to put together some sort of dinner, and so she suggested that they use the rest of the afternoon for reading. She pulled out one of her massive biology textbooks and propped herself up on the bed, while Poe lounged in the hammock, engrossed in an old mystery novel.</p><p class="p1">But Rey couldn’t focus on the words in front of her—it was still too strange to read with another person in the room.</p><p class="p1">And what was stranger, is that she really didn’t mind.</p><p class="p1">Despite his awful first impression, she liked Poe. He was kind, funny, and hadn’t taken the liberty of prying into her situation just yet. She loved that she was no longer a self-contained being, that someone else was there to hear her thoughts; to acknowledge her existence. When she had caught Poe in her arms earlier, it dawned upon her that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d hugged someone.</p><p class="p1">And of course Poe thought he was imposing, and she understood: how could a girl so used to being left alone adjust to sharing her tiny cottage with a stranger who had introduced himself by demanding she leave? But he didn’t understand the half of it: the loneliness had numbed her, and now that she had someone around, she was terrified to go back.</p><p class="p1">She got up from the bed and rummaged around under the sink for something to prepare for dinner. There was a small salad of carrots, a cucumber, and the mushrooms she had collected earlier, and then a tin of canned beef and instant mashed potatoes.</p><p class="p1">“Let me wash and chop the vegetables, at least?” Poe asked, putting down his book.</p><p class="p1">“That would be great,” Rey said, grabbing the knife and the cutting board. She also got out the old ceramic bowl with the peonies around the edges for the mashed potatoes, and noticed Poe squinting at it curiously.</p><p class="p1"><em>Shit,</em> Rey remembered. <em>I forgot where that came from.</em></p><p class="p1">Had he seen it before?</p><p class="p1">“So,” she said suddenly. “Do you know what you’re going to do tomorrow?”</p><p class="p1">“Um,” Poe said. “Whatever you’re doing, I guess. Or I can get out of the way. Or we can hike again! Or—”</p><p class="p1">“I work all day weekdays,” she reminded him. “And I doubt you want to tag along with me to Skywalker’s Grocery.”</p><p class="p1">“Not particularly,” Poe said. “I guess I should start looking for a job. You know of anything?”</p><p class="p1">“No.”</p><p class="p1">“I guess I’ll walk to town tomorrow and ask around,” he said. “Otherwise, if you don’t mind, I’m okay just catching up on reading and keeping Bea company.”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” Rey said. “Of course.”</p><p class="p1">They ate their dinner silently, both of them resigned to the fact that there could be no such thing as lively conversation between a girl with no past and a boy who had suffered two tragedies in the course of the last month. But it would do.</p><p class="p1">“Want to get a few more <em>Avatar</em>’s in before we hit the sack?” Poe asked.</p><p class="p1">“Sure.”</p><p class="p1">They sat back on the bed—an inch closer than last time—and hit play on the next episode. Rey leaned back into her pillow and enjoyed the story, giggling with Poe at Sokka’s antics. Her bare legs were getting cold, and so she slipped them under the crochet blanket, Poe doing the same when a draft came in from the window. There was something more intimate about it, the two of them sharing the same warmth. She yawned, tired out from the hike earlier, and a small part of her was tempted to lean on Poe’s shoulder to rest.</p><p class="p1">She stretched out as the next episode began to play, one of her socked feet hitting Poe’s leg in the process. She blushed in the dark and yanked it back.</p><p class="p1">“Sorry.”</p><p class="p1">He shrugged. “Take up as much space as you need.”</p><p class="p1">Rey curled back into her side of the bed, parsing his words over. <em>He couldn’t have meant—nah.</em></p><p class="p1">“I think I’m jealous of Aang,” Poe said, staring absentmindedly at the screen.</p><p class="p1">“Why?”</p><p class="p1">“He has something to do,” Poe said. “He’s lost everything, but at least he has a clear direction in front of him…he’s never had to think too hard about what he’s lost—he’s never had the time.” He put his head on his knees and sighed.</p><p class="p1">“Poe—” Rey said, and without thinking she crawled over and wrapped her arms around him.</p><p class="p1">She burrowed her face into his shoulder as he cried quietly, and the two of them stayed like that for a while, two near strangers holding each other in the dark.</p><p>
  
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>sort of quick getting-the-plot-out-of-the-way sort of chapter (fluff incoming soon), but there is an important reveal so :)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  
</p><p class="p1">When Poe woke up Rey was already gone.</p><p class="p1">She had left a couple of hours earlier to head over to Skywalker’s Grocery, and was kind enough to leave him an apple and the rest of yesterday’s baguette for breakfast.</p><p class="p1">It had been a rough night.</p><p class="p1">He had cried, really cried, for the first time in her presence, the sobs shaking through his body as he tried to calm down. Rey had simply held him as he got the emotions out of his system, and the feeling of her arms around him was more than enough. She didn’t ask him for an explanation—considering what he’d been through, none was needed.</p><p class="p1">Poe climbed out of the hammock and stretched out as he set the tea kettle on the hot plate to boil his cup of English breakfast. He was planning to go into town today—he’d researched some job openings on the laptop and was thinking of applying to be a waiter at the local Italian restaurant. There didn’t seem to be much else available, as far as he could tell.</p><p class="p1">Bea looked up at him as he finished his breakfast, giving him a soft meow. She laid down in a sunny patch on the floor, her eyes squinting up lazily at the sun.</p><p class="p1">“You’re lucky you don’t have to work,” Poe groaned, and she ignored him, rolling over onto her fat belly—Rey was right: she really was getting huge.</p><p class="p1">It was about a fifteen minute walk to get into town, and there wasn’t much to see when he got there, either. The town didn’t have much besides Skywalker’s Grocery, the library, a hardware store, a few deserted-looking boutiques, and of course, <em>Millicent’s, </em>the Italian restaurant that had advertised an open server position.</p><p class="p1">Poe found the restaurant on a quaint little street corner and stepped inside. It was mostly empty except for two older couples who looked like they ate lunch here regularly—and based on their bored expressions, it was only because there weren’t any other options. There was a general feeling of laziness and half-assery about the place. The decor included checkered tablecloths, battery-lit candles, and fake grapevines hanging from the ceiling. A tall, red-headed man stood at the counter near the back, the faux candlelight accentuating his pallor.</p><p class="p1">“Hi,” Poe said, approaching him. “I’d like to apply for the server position?”</p><p class="p1">The man stared at him regretfully, as if Poe were a child he’d been forced to babysit. “Very well,” he sighed, opening the curtain that led to the back. “Come with me.”</p><p class="p1">They sat down on two stools in an office across from the kitchen, where he spotted stacks of empty TV dinner boxes—clearly the place was not as gourmet as they liked to advertise. The manager, who introduced himself as Armitage Hux, looked as dour as ever as Poe handed over his application and resume. Hux stared at it silently for what felt like five whole minutes, until Poe began to feel a bit uncomfortable.</p><p class="p1">“So um…who talks first? You talk first? I talk first?” Poe asked, wringing his hands together nervously.</p><p class="p1">“Mr. Poe Dameron?” he said, squinting at the papers. “Fresh out of college and…” Hux scrunched up his nose. “And no server experience? No retail experience? Nothing?”</p><p class="p1">“Um,” Poe answered. “Not really. But I’m a hard worker, I promise.”</p><p class="p1">“I see,” Hux said. “Well fortunately for you, we’re extremely desperate for a waiter, so I’m willing to take a shot on you regardless. Can you start right now?”</p><p class="p1">Poe wondered if he should be offended. “Sure?”</p><p class="p1">“You’re not from around here, are you?” Hux asked, with the typical condescension the residents of small towns sometimes gave outsiders.</p><p class="p1">“No.”</p><p class="p1">“And where are you living?”</p><p class="p1">“Uh,” Poe said, unsure of how to explain, or even if he should. “I have a, um, I share a little place in the woods with someone.”</p><p class="p1">Hux’s eyes widened. “Don’t tell me you live with that skinny girl who works at the grocery store.”</p><p class="p1">“Is that a problem?” Poe asked, leaning forward in his chair.</p><p class="p1">“That girl is a freak,” Hux stated. “No one knows who she is or where she came from. She’s been living in the woods like a hermit for years…refuses to smile at anybody like a nice girl her age should.”</p><p class="p1">“Refuses to smile at <em>you</em>, you mean?”</p><p class="p1">Hux grimaced. “That girl needs to start living a normal, civilized life like everyone else—and she’s not welcome in this establishment until she does.”</p><p class="p1">“You don’t know her,” Poe said, looking Hux straight in the eye. “She’s one of the kindest and toughest people I’ve ever met, and she’s my friend, so you better watch what you say, alright?”</p><p class="p1">“Ah,” Hux said, shrugging off Poe’s words in a blasé way that made him assume he was used to people getting offended at his comments. “She’s your girlfriend?”</p><p class="p1">“No,” Poe said, “I’m just saying that if you want me to work here, I don’t want to hear anything else about her coming out of your mouth.”</p><p class="p1">“Whatever you say,” Hux said, sighing as a short girl wearing an apron came in. “That’s Rose,” he said, pointing at her as if she was nothing more than an appliance to him. “She’s our cook. She’ll tell you what to do. You work until we close at nine. It’s minimum wage with tips. No benefits.”</p><p class="p1">Hux stood up and left before Poe had a chance to ask another question.</p><p class="p1">Rose walked over, rolling her eyes; and Poe looked at her, still processing. “Is he always…um?”</p><p class="p1">“Yep,” Rose said, giving him a firm handshake. “Welcome aboard.”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p1">Poe wasn’t back when Rey got home.</p><p class="p1">She took this as good news, and hoped this meant he had found work somewhere. Bea was yanking the crochet blanket off the bed, making a tiny nest for herself in the corner of the room. Rey lounged on the bed and opened up the new laptop. She had decided to start researching scholarship applications online—she couldn’t put it off any longer, no matter what her nerves were telling her.</p><p class="p1">Very few of them would provide the sort of financial aid she would need to get all the way through college—except for one, a huge national competition called JEDI—the Junior Experimental Discovery Initiative. The scholarship application would involve a series of essays about independent research she had performed. There was only one winner.</p><p class="p1">How could she expect to win something like that? And what research had she done, or could she do, anyway? A scholarship like that, of course, would almost certainly go to the last person who needed it, someone with a supportive family and a real bathroom and plenty of money to pay for any education they desired—someone who just saw it as a nice discount so they could afford a nice spring break trip. Rey had never even seen the ocean. She probably wouldn’t stand a chance.</p><p class="p1">She bookmarked the page anyway.</p><p class="p1">Rey collapsed onto her pillow, contemplating these last few days with Poe. She had definitely grown warmer towards him…and part of that had to do with the fact that one of her earlier theories about him had pretty much been confirmed—but she had no idea what to do with this information now that she had it.</p><p class="p1">She rolled off of the bed and lifted up the one loose floorboard in the corner, reaching down into the dark space until her hand hit the metal box she knew was stashed there.</p><p class="p1">The box was about twice the size of a standard shoebox, with tiny white daisies hand-painted around the edges. Her heart ached as she opened it; as she lifted out the familiar items with new appreciation…she had memorized every detail of what was inside long ago.</p><p class="p1">The love notes—written on pieces of notebook paper or on the backs of receipts, the small scribbles that read, <em>Shara dearest, I thought about you all day today</em>, or, <em>Mi amor, last night I dreamed we walked outside in a meadow, and we laid down in the grass and you kissed me and I woke up so happy… </em>and of course, <em>Shara, I know you’ve been so stressed lately, having to drive to the city for work, so I built this for you, only you, so you can escape somewhere, so you can have a place all alone. Happy 1</em><span class="s1"><em><sup>st</sup></em></span><em> Wedding Anniversary, my love, I hope you love it here…</em></p><p class="p1">The concert tickets paper-clipped together, a medal from a spelling bee and a trophy from a track meet, a tiny china doll in a blue lace dress…</p><p class="p1">The journal from when Shara was sixteen, the entries ranging from <em>I heard this song on the radio today, one that makes me feel more alive than I’ve ever been, and I’ve been waiting all afternoon for it to come back on,</em> to gems like <em>Abuela keeps teasing me about picking out my china patterns whenever I tell her about K.D…he calls here so often that she must suspect we’re together by now.</em> The journal Rey knew every word of, the young woman’s voice that had guided her through adolescence and been her companion on many lonely, painful nights, the journal that had explained why she woke up bleeding one morning and what to do when kids were mean to her at school about only having a few sets of clothes…</p><p class="p1">—what love would feel like if she ever found it.</p><p class="p1">And of course, there were the photographs.</p><p class="p1">The photographs were newer, a more recent addition placed among the childhood memorabilia, and when Rey flipped through them again, looked at the little family, particularly at the little boy with the big brown eyes and the messy head of curls, she knew exactly who her new roommate was.</p><p class="p1">Poe Dameron was Shara Bey’s son. Which meant she would have to share something that for the longest time in the world, she thought was a secret all her own.</p><p class="p1">Because the thing was, for a long, long time, ever since Rey was eleven years old and digging around in the floorboards, the ghost of Shara Bey was her best and only friend.</p><p>
  
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  
</p><p class="p1">Poe yawned, not quite feeling like getting up and out of the hammock yet. He’d noticed when Rey went to bed early last night, and when she’d left early today. She’d been in an oddly quiet mood the last day or so, cagey, even for her. Poe decided not to be offended by it or worry about it too much. Besides, he had a new job in the afternoons and evenings; something to finally put his energy into, and it already felt like a relief.</p><p class="p1">He’d been looking forward to going today, actually, but when he turned on his phone he found a surprising text from Rose, his new coworker, telling him he didn’t have to come in—it was their super slow day, she’d sign his name on the timesheet, and she’d handle everything herself. It was shockingly kind of her, but he accepted it without question. People in small towns tended to either be as cruel as his manager or as kind as Rose, and it looked like his new job would have him experience both.</p><p class="p1"><em>Hm, </em>he thought, staring up at the ceiling from where he laid in the hammock. <em>What to do with the day now?</em></p><p class="p1">Bea meowed, as if hearing his thoughts. She’d been acting strange too, pulling all of Rey’s blankets and clothes into the corner of the room and huddling there, not much in the mood for her usual snuggles. Poe had a special affection for Bea—after all, he didn’t think Rey had ever had much in the way of parents or perhaps even a friend, but she had always had her faithful orange cat at her side.</p><p class="p1">He finally got up out of bed, washing an apple in the sink and setting the tea kettle to boil. Maybe he’d spend the day reading—or perhaps he could think of something nice to do for Rey, in return for all of her generosity—there was an idea.</p><p class="p1">And of course, he still had things to deal with in terms of his house (or, perhaps he should say, what remained of it) and arrangements to make for his dad’s funeral. He was too young to know exactly what to do or where to start, and the many emails that had piled up from relatives and accountants and the funeral home were still sitting in his inbox unopened. The funeral home had his father’s ashes waiting for him, and eventually he’d have to plan some sort of memorial service—but he just couldn’t seem to budge. He hadn’t seen the body, hadn’t been there when it happened, and something about holding a service would cement Kes’s death in a way that Poe wasn’t quite ready to process.</p><p class="p1">Just as he was about to muster up his courage and email the minister of their old church, Bea started meowing from the corner, pacing around in small circles.</p><p class="p1">“You okay?” Poe asked, and Bea simply glared back at him with a look that clearly said <em>You’re not my mom.</em></p><p class="p1">Poe walked over to the corner and leaned down next to Bea, scratching behind her ears with concern. “What’s going on, Bea-Bea?”</p><p class="p1">She laid down on her nest of blankets and let out a piercing yowl, her deep breaths moving faster and faster across her fat belly.</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Wait.</em>
</p><p class="p1">Poe tried not to panic as he grabbed the laptop from the table and did a few quick internet searches—all of which confirmed what he’d been dreading.</p><p class="p1">So Bea was about to have kittens. And Rey wasn’t due home for six more hours. And there wasn’t a vet in town. And he didn’t have a car.</p><p class="p1">Worst of all, the internet informed him that unless there were complications, this was something that he was supposed to do himself.</p><p class="p1">Poe took a deep breath, pacing back and forth and watching Bea carefully, reading the articles he had pulled up over and over. He needed warm water, towels, dental floss to cut the umbilical cords, some cardboard boxes…he busied himself with preparations and tried not to panic. If god forbid something happened to Bea, Rey would never forgive him, dammit, Poe would never forgive himself…</p><p class="p1">Bea yowled loudly again from the corner.</p><p class="p1">“I know, I know, I’m trying!” Poe cried, his hands shaking as he poured warm water from the kettle into a bowl.</p><p class="p1">He said down next to her on the floor and took slow, deep breaths, rubbing Bea’s back as she continued to meow. “Okay, Bea,” he said, talking to himself as much as to the cat. “We’re doing this.”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p1">Rey signed her name on the timesheet and left the grocery store exhausted, heading out of town and wandering through the woods towards home. She’d been feeling selfish and guilty all day thinking about the box hidden under the floorboards. Poe had been hurting, and she knew, logically, that having a box of some of his mother’s things would help to heal him. So why didn’t she just hand it over?</p><p class="p1">It…it was more complicated than that.</p><p class="p1">Because Shara was hers, too, and she wasn’t sure how Poe would respond to knowing that—or to hearing that Rey hadn’t told him what she’d always known: that his father had built Sunflower Cottage for his mother, and that Shara had once turned it into her own personal hideaway, a place for keeping her memories and secrets. She didn’t know how Poe would react to knowing that Rey had her own relationship with his mother—a relationship that felt one-sided; that Poe might see as some sort of fraud. Which maybe it was.</p><p class="p1">Rey had told him that her things in the cottage were from thrift stores and antique shops—and some of them were—but a large percentage of her stuff—the dishes, the gardening tools, the floral tablecloth—were there when she walked inside for the first time ten years ago. Those things were all Shara’s.</p><p class="p1">How could she be so possessive over someone else’s dead mother? A woman she had never even met? Rey felt that when she finally decided to tell Poe, it would be a sort of cheapening of her connection to Shara Bey Dameron—and that somehow, all that Rey had of her would rightfully transfer to Poe again. It would be lost to her forever.</p><p class="p1">Rey walked up the stone path to the cottage door and sighed. She was being ridiculous—she was being horrible. She had no right to keep Poe’s mother from him.</p><p class="p1">She opened the door and looked around, puzzled.</p><p class="p1">“Don’t worry!” Poe called over from what looked like the floor by the end of her bed. “I’ve got it all under control.”</p><p class="p1">Rey rushed over. “You’ve got what under—” She looked at the scene before her and let out a shriek that was somewhere in between shock and delight. “Bea…Bea was…?”</p><p class="p1">Poe nodded at her, a triumphant grin on his face. “We’re parents,” he said, laughing. “I mean, sorry, I meant, like, Bea—”</p><p class="p1">“I know what you meant,” Rey said, smiling and leaning down to look at the scene in front of her. Bea was lying in her nest of blankets, looking tired but healthy, and four very tiny pink kittens were lined up and getting milk. “When did this happen?”</p><p class="p1">“Around noon?” Poe said. “The labor went very well, and all the kittens look really healthy, and now of course there’s the matter of finding them homes, and making sure they have proper nutrition, and we should probably look into—”</p><p class="p1">Rey just stared at him, awestruck. “Poe, you…you sat here and helped deliver Bea’s kittens?”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” Poe said bashfully. “We managed okay.”</p><p class="p1">Rey beamed, and leaned in to press a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you, Poe,” she said. “I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t been here.”</p><p class="p1">Poe flushed. “She would have been fine. Bea did it all on her own, really, I just—”</p><p class="p1">“I mean it,” Rey said. “Thank you.”</p><p class="p1">They sat there on the floor, watching in awe as Bea curled up with her new little family. Rey couldn’t remember ever feeling this warm, this at peace here at the cottage—right now it was only her, Poe, and the little miracles lying on the blankets in front of them, and she’d never felt so at home.</p><p class="p1">Poe started laughing.</p><p class="p1">“What?”</p><p class="p1">“I still can’t believe you didn’t know she was pregnant.”</p><p class="p1">“You didn’t either!”</p><p class="p1">“She’s your cat!”</p><p class="p1">They laughed, Poe reaching down to stroke the tiny kittens gently on their backs. “I guess we don’t know who the father is, do we?”</p><p class="p1">“Who knows,” Rey said. “Bea runs off during the day and does whatever she likes. We should probably get her spayed, I guess.”</p><p class="p1">Poe examined the kittens closely, pointing out the tiniest one, who was trying his best to squeeze in next to his siblings. “I’m worried about that one,” Poe said. “He’s pretty small.”</p><p class="p1">“He’s tough,” Rey said. “He’ll make it.”</p><p class="p1">She got up and looked around for food to make for dinner, and didn’t find much that satisfied her.</p><p class="p1">“I wish I could make something nice to celebrate,” Rey said. “It seems a pity to have macaroni again when tonight is a special occasion.”</p><p class="p1">“I know where we can get some free dinner,” Poe said.</p><p class="p1">She raised an eyebrow at him skeptically, and he just grinned.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p1">Poe unlocked the back door to <em>Millicent’s </em>quietly while Rey stood next to him with her arms crossed. “Are you sure you’re allowed to take food from here? You’ve only been working here a day.”</p><p class="p1">“Of course I’m not allowed,” he said. “But the manager is a dick and throws it all out anyway. Rose said she does it all the time and he doesn’t notice.”</p><p class="p1">Rey shrugged. Considering the morally dubious things she had done over the years to get by, she wasn’t one to talk.</p><p class="p1">Poe walked in to see Rose sitting on one of the tables watching a movie on her tablet.</p><p class="p1">“Hey Rose,” Poe said, waving at her. “Thanks for um…covering for me today, I guess. Do you mean it, about being able to handle it by yourself?”</p><p class="p1">Rose scoffed. “We had one old lady,” she said. “I’ve spent the whole day sitting back here, although I will need you in tomorrow. I’ve nearly finished all of the <em>Pirates of the Caribbean </em>movies.”</p><p class="p1">“Nice,” Poe said. “This is my friend Rey, by the way.”</p><p class="p1">Rose reached forward and shook her hand with a grin. “Nice to meet you,” she said, reaching in to hug Rey, and then she looked up at Poe with a smirk. “Did you guys come for free dinner?”</p><p class="p1">“<em>Told you</em>,” Poe whispered, and Rey elbowed him. “And yes, we did.”</p><p class="p1">“Cool,” Rose said, pausing her movie. “We have some chicken parmesan and chocolate cake that should work.” She opened the fridge and began scanning the shelves, when all of a sudden the bell on the door jingled.</p><p class="p1">“A customer?” Poe asked.</p><p class="p1">Rose’s eyes widened in panic. “Hux.” She looked at Poe, and he remembered that she’d been in the room when their manager had insulted Rey; when he’d said he didn’t want to ever see her in his restaurant. They had to get out—now.</p><p class="p1">But there wasn’t time—they could hear his heavy footsteps approaching the back of the restaurant.</p><p class="p1">“Quick!” Rose said, shoving them both into a tiny broom closet. “Stay quiet!”</p><p class="p1">The closet was tiny, tall but thin, and there was barely enough room for one person to stand in it, much less two, which meant that Poe and Rey faced each other, their bodies pressed together, as they listened to Hux walk into the kitchen. They could practically hear the frown on his face.</p><p class="p1">“Rose,” Hux said in a monotone voice. “How was business today?”</p><p class="p1">“Only one customer,” she said. “Not great.”</p><p class="p1">“No,” he commented. “Certainly not. I hope you’re smiling at the customers, being pleasant, even when they aren’t? I don’t want to have another talk with you about your attitude problem.”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t think it’s my <em>attitude</em>, Armitage,” Rose said, her tone just on the professional edge of snark. “I think perhaps if you let me actually <em>cook</em> instead of just heating up TV dinners, people might show up more often—”</p><p class="p1">“I’ve <em>told </em>you, and if you had business sense like I do you’d know, that it’s much better for us to not waste money on fresh ingredients. It can’t be avoided.”</p><p class="p1">“But isn’t that like, the entire point of a restaurant?”</p><p class="p1">Hux sighed, and they continued to argue.</p><p class="p1">Poe tried his best to stay calm—not because of his angry manager yelling outside, but because of the fact that he was pressed up tight against Rey, able to feel every curve of her body warm against him, and the sensation was making him dizzy.</p><p class="p1">The closet had slits at the top of the door, providing just enough light so that they could see each other in the dark, the shadows splashed across their faces. Poe looked down, at Rey’s lips just inches from his own, and then she met his eyes—for a split second they formed an understanding, and he was just about to lean in when—</p><p class="p1">“Okay!” Rose exclaimed, throwing open the door, and they both came stumbling out with red faces. “He’s finally gone. Did you still want dinner?”</p><p>
  
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>cw: a rather large spider.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
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</p><p class="p1">Rey bit at her nails as she read over the application for the JEDI scholarship for what must of been the fiftieth time. It just looked so…daunting. She had no idea of what sort of scientific research she could write about, and even if she found something, she wasn’t confident that she could put her thoughts together very well. It was so much easier to shut the laptop closed, leave it for another day, and go to check on the kittens in the corner of the room.</p><p class="p1">They were two days old now, with tiny, wobbling legs and sharp claws, their fur just beginning to show its color—and they were all as orange as their Mama. Poe had set the entire corner of the room up as if it were a little kitten nursery, prepared with boxes and blankets and bottles and anything else the new mother and her babies might need. Her heart swelled every time one of them let out one of their tiny, high-pitched kitten meows, and she watched with a smile as Bea laid back and nursed, looking pleased with her efforts.</p><p class="p1">Miraculously, in only the two days since they were born, they had already managed to find homes for three out of the four kittens. Rose was taking one, her boyfriend, Finn, would take another, and Mr. Skywalker from the grocery store wanted one as well. There was only one kitten yet to be adopted.</p><p class="p1">She heard the sound of Poe’s key turning in the door and watched in amusement as the kittens mewled happily. Although Rey was Bea’s favorite, of course, her babies had latched onto Poe like ducklings, won over by his constant care and maternal instincts. She had to admit, the whole thing was kind of adorable—she never would have guessed that the guy who had banged on her door furiously demanding rent a few weeks ago would turn out to be the world’s best cat mom.</p><p class="p1">“How are they doing?” Poe asked, slipping off the bow tie he wore during work.</p><p class="p1">“Cute as ever and ready for a nap,” Rey answered, standing back up and sitting down in front of the laptop again. “How was work?”</p><p class="p1">“Pretty slow again,” he said. “We had about five customers today, so Rose and I got through half a season of <em>The West Wing.</em>”</p><p class="p1">Rey rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe your job is even real. How can that place even afford to stay open?”</p><p class="p1">“Hux’s money, I guess,” he said, leaning back on the hammock. “What are you working on?”</p><p class="p1">“Oh, um,” Rey said. “It’s a scholarship application. But I don’t…I’m not sure I have any chance of getting it.”</p><p class="p1">“No way,” Poe said, gesturing to one of her giant stacks of science books. “You know more complicated science than anyone I’ve ever met, that’s for sure. What’s holding you back?”</p><p class="p1">She sighed, her eyes blurring from staring at the screen. “I’m supposed to submit original research,” she explained. “And that’s not really something I have.”</p><p class="p1">Poe glanced over at the back wall, at the pages and pages of notes she had tacked up about her garden and the plants she’d found in the forest. “What about all that?” he asked. “I bet you there’s something in all that data you can use.”</p><p class="p1">“Huh,” Rey said, standing up and looking at her notes, running a finger along the edges of the detailed drawings of wildflowers, the charts of vegetable growth. “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, this was all just for fun, it was never really—”</p><p class="p1">“How will they know?”</p><p class="p1">Rey smiled. He might be on to something.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p1">It was mid-afternoon Saturday, and after the two of them had devoured an entire box of slightly stale croissants for lunch that Rey had got for free at work, she decided it to was finally time to teach Poe a thing or two about gardening.</p><p class="p1">They had spent the morning taking the bus to the Goodwill in the next town over to pick out some new clothes for Poe, and overall, it had been a fun morning. Poe got some basics, jeans and t-shirts to replace what he’d lost in the fire; and Rey had treated herself to a floral dress that had definitely belonged to someone’s Grandma, but when she fastened it around her waist with a belt, she thought it looked rather cute on her.</p><p class="p1">On the walk back home, Poe had mentioned that he was interested in learning more about gardening, and that looking at her notes last night had peaked his curiosity. There wasn’t much else they could think of to do, so the two of them finished their lunch, checked in on the kittens, and made their way out to the garden, Rey’s straw sunhat perched daintily on her head.</p><p class="p1">Poe knelt at the edge of the garden at first, respectful of her domain, and listened attentively as she pointed out the different plants—the tomatoes and cucumbers and squash; all the herbs and wildflowers that grew in smaller patches in-between. After years of Rey being the only person who knew about the complex workings of her garden, it was refreshing to share these secrets with someone else; to see another person appreciate the unique magic it took for each of these plants to survive and grow.</p><p class="p1">Oh, yes, secrets. Speaking of—</p><p class="p1">Monday. She’d tell him on Monday. Weekends were when they spent the most time together, so she’d be stuck with him if something went wrong. If she told him at the beginning of the workweek, they’d both be away from home all day, and they could avoid each other, if that was what they needed. And besides, they were having such a nice time—Bea had just had kittens, things were going great—why ruin it?</p><p class="p1">And of course…well, there was that moment in the broom closet the other day where she could have sworn he had been about to kiss her.</p><p class="p1">And in that moment, she had wanted him to.</p><p class="p1">Sure, she had hated Poe from the beginning, but admittedly, she’d always found him attractive. And now that she understood the pain he was living through, that he had apologized and redeemed himself, that he had done what felt like a million little endearing things in their time living together that had melted her heart, well—</p><p class="p1">She maybe, probably, kind of had a little, tiny crush on him.</p><p class="p1">Rey turned to watch as he dug weeds out from the corner of the garden, his strong forearms pushing in the shovel; the sun lighting up the details in his curls, and then he looked up to smile at her, and…</p><p class="p1">She definitely had a crush on him.</p><p class="p1">Poe crawled over towards her, asking a question about one of the plants that she barely heard. She was too busy being caught up in the rush of her brain processing this new epiphany, in wondering what she was going to do now, in getting lost in those deep brown eyes of his…</p><p class="p1">“So you have to replant them the next Spring?”</p><p class="p1">“What?” Rey said, startled. “Oh, those. Yes, um. Yes, you do.”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p1">They had macaroni and cheese with apple slices for dinner again, and some doughnuts as a special treat for dessert. Once they had finished, Poe collapsed dramatically on the hammock, exhausted and stuffed.</p><p class="p1">“I’m ready to sleep off those doughnuts,” he joked, and then there was a loud cracking noise that startled them both.</p><p class="p1">—and then the hammock fell down.</p><p class="p1">Poe cried out as he hit the floor, groaning as he pulled himself out of the pile of woven fabric and ropes. “I told you I didn’t think this would hold.”</p><p class="p1">Rey giggled.</p><p class="p1">“I’m okay, I swear,” he said, examining the ceiling where the hook had come loose. “I’ll just sleep on the floor.”</p><p class="p1">“We can go into town tomorrow and see about getting an air mattress.”</p><p class="p1">“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Poe said. He started arranging the hammock and the blankets on the floor, making a sort of makeshift bed.</p><p class="p1">“Are you sure you’ll be comfortable?” Rey asked.</p><p class="p1">“No worries,” he said. “I’m so exhausted I could sleep anywhere.”</p><p class="p1">They both went through their usual routine of getting ready for bed, turning around while they changed, Rey into a cami and shorts, and Poe into a pair of cotton pajama pants, his torso bare. Just as Rey was about to put the lamp out, Poe spotted something moving across the floor.</p><p class="p1">“Something moved.”</p><p class="p1">“What?”</p><p class="p1">“There,” he pointed. “Over by the sink.”</p><p class="p1">Rey got out of bed to look. “Ah,” she said. “Spider.”</p><p class="p1">“How big is it?”</p><p class="p1">She made a circle about the size of a tennis ball with her hands, and Poe groaned. “Please, I’m begging you, just kill it.”</p><p class="p1">Rey went across the room to slip on her rain boots, presumably to squish the monster. When she got back to the sink, peered around it on all sides, searching. “It’s gone,” she said.</p><p class="p1">“What!?”</p><p class="p1">“It’s not poisonous, Dameron. You’ll live.”</p><p class="p1">Poe groaned, lying back on the floor as Rey turned out the light and curled up under her own blankets. He tried to sleep, but his body was still tense. At least Rey had the bedposts elevating her from the floor for protection. The cottage was tiny, the spider wouldn’t have much space to move around, so inevitably, sometime during the night, it would <em>have</em> to crawl over him, and—</p><p class="p1">He stood up and walked over to the kitchen table, sitting down in the chair, and put his head down. It was fine. He’d sleep sitting up.</p><p class="p1">“Are you okay?” Rey asked.</p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” Poe said, as casually as he could. “Just you know, trying the whole vertical sleep thing. I mean, it works for horses, and—”</p><p class="p1">Rey narrowed her eyes. “You’re really scared of that spider, aren’t you?”</p><p class="p1">“Um, maybe,” Poe admitted. “Can I have the bed tonight? I’ll make dinner by myself for a week.”</p><p class="p1">“No way,” Rey said. “I may not be as terrified of it as you are, but I’m certainly not going to be able to sleep on the ground knowing that thing is crawling around either.”</p><p class="p1">Poe sighed. “Ugh.”</p><p class="p1">“Look,” Rey said, moving to the far side of the bed. “Just share with me for tonight. I mean…I mean, you can, if you want.”</p><p class="p1">Poe’s eyes widened at the suggestion. He certainly wasn’t against the idea of snuggling up to Rey—not that he would, obviously it would be a very platonic sharing of a bed, and he’d be as respectful as possible…</p><p class="p1">—But it was a twin bed. There really wasn’t much <em>room</em> to be respectful.</p><p class="p1">“If that’s okay with you,” he said, and Rey nodded.</p><p class="p1">“I’ll just scooch over as close to the wall as I can,” she said.</p><p class="p1">“It’s okay, it’s your bed, you can take up as much space as you need.”</p><p class="p1">“If I take up much more you’re gonna fall off, Poe.”</p><p class="p1">She was right. Even with Rey practically pressed to the wall of the cottage on her side, there was barely enough space for him to lie down comfortably. If he moved over an inch he’d fall to the ground. It was a chill spring night, but even so Poe decided not to move under the blanket where Rey was. He’d just lay on top of it. Goosebumps were prickling over his skin, but he’d be fine. He’d take goosebumps over the legs of a spider any day.</p><p class="p1">“Poe, you’re shivering,” Rey whispered. “Get under the blanket, it’s okay.”</p><p class="p1">She lifted the corner of the blanket for him to huddle under, and he moved closer, intoxicated by the feeling of sharing her warmth, their bodies just on the edge of touching. They were facing away from each other, both of them laying on their side—they both sensed the other was still awake behind them, and the tension in the bed was too intense for either of them to relax.</p><p class="p1">Poe shifted slightly, and ended up kicking Rey’s leg.</p><p class="p1">“Hey!” she said.</p><p class="p1">“Sorry,” he whispered back.</p><p class="p1">“I’ll get you for that.”</p><p class="p1">“Will you?”</p><p class="p1">“You asked for it,” Rey said, and brought her fingers down to tickle at Poe’s stomach, and he convulsed and laughed on the bed.</p><p class="p1">“Hey!” he shrieked, rolling around as Rey kept attacking him. “That’s it,” he said. “I’m getting revenge.”</p><p class="p1">Poe propped himself over Rey’s body, leaning on his elbows, and smiled at her, bringing his hands down to enact ticklish vengeance. She giggled, and shot a hand out to tickle him return, making Poe collapse suddenly on top of her.</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Oh…</em>
</p><p class="p1">Rey was smiling up at him in the dark as he leaned over her, relishing the feeling of their bodies pressed together.</p><p class="p1">“Poe,” she whispered, bringing a hand up to touch his face. “That other day at the restaurant…in the closet…”</p><p class="p1">His heart sped up. “Yes?”</p><p class="p1">“What we almost did…” she said. “Do it now…”</p><p class="p1">And so Poe leaned in and kissed her, both of them sighing with relief as his lips finally began to move against hers. He reached down and threaded his fingers through her hair, Rey letting out a tiny moan as she reached up to let her hands explore his arms and chest.</p><p class="p1">They rolled to their sides again, facing each other this time, continuing to make out on the bed, kissing and touching and sighing as they let out weeks of pent-up tension, weeks of wanting.</p><p class="p1">“Rey,” Poe sighed, breaking away. “I think I…I have feelings for you. And if you don’t, that’s okay, we can just—I mean we can be friends with benefits, or friends, or—”</p><p class="p1">“I like you too,” she answered. “A lot.”</p><p class="p1">“Really?”</p><p class="p1">“Really,” she said, reaching up to run her fingers through his curls. “Although at first I was <em>very</em> determined to hate you…somehow you…bewitched me.”</p><p class="p1">“I <em>bewitched </em>you?” Poe asked with an incredulous giggle.</p><p class="p1">“Oh, piss off.”</p><p class="p1">He wrapped his arms around Rey, holding her tight against his chest. “You’re extraordinary, you know,” he said. “I would have told you a long time ago, but it would have come out weird.”</p><p class="p1">“What?” she laughed. “Extraordinary how?”</p><p class="p1">Poe kissed her hand and looked at her reverently, her hazel eyes smiling even in the dark. “You’re strong and independent. Resourceful, intelligent, creative—and insanely pretty. I’ve never met anyone quite like you in my life,” he said, stroking her arm gently, and Rey rolled her eyes.</p><p class="p1">She shrugged. “You’re okay, I guess,” she teased, and kissed him again.</p><p class="p1">They made out some more, happy to finally just hold each other in the dark, to have conquered the tension that had sometimes made living together a stressful (although not unpleasant) experience. But not anymore. Poe had been terrified that this amazing girl would of had no interest in him, but here she was, happy and content in his arms.</p><p class="p1">“We can always wait to buy an air mattress,” he said, and Rey nuzzled close to his chest and smiled.</p><p class="p1">“I think we have a spider to thank in the morning,” she joked.</p><p class="p1">“Damn it! I had just forgotten it was in here! <em>Rey! </em>Come on!”</p><p>
  
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  
</p><p class="p1">When Rey woke up, she was warm.</p><p class="p1">Not just warm in the usual way she would be, snuggled under her blankets—but in a way that felt deeper.</p><p class="p1">Poe still had his arm slung around her waist, his hair tousled as he snored softly behind her. He looked so pretty like this, his skin golden under the sunlight just starting to come through the window, the shadows of the moving leaves dancing across his face.</p><p class="p1">She nudged at his arm gently and watched as his eyes opened, his face breaking into a smile when he saw her lying in his arms, and he remembered.</p><p class="p1">“Hey, sunshine.”</p><p class="p1">Rey giggled. “You’ve never called me that before.”</p><p class="p1">He pressed a small kiss to her neck. “Not out loud, at least.”</p><p class="p1">She snuggled deep into his arms, leaning her head against his chest and sighing. “Did last night really happen?”</p><p class="p1">“I sure hope it did,” Poe said, and they beamed at each other.</p><p class="p1">“I’m going to make us some tea,” Rey said, and Poe smiled as he watched her walk over to the sink and fill the kettle.</p><p class="p1">The kittens had woken up too, all four of them meowing as Bea groomed them one by one. They were growing fast already, big enough to form personalities of their own and tumble around with each other. The smallest one had endeared itself to Poe, who had been feeding him extra milk in a plastic bottle to ensure he would grow healthy and strong along with his siblings.</p><p class="p1">“That cat follows you around like you’re a mother duck,” Rey commented, watching as the kitten followed Poe to the other side of the room. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he thinks you’re his mother instead of Bea.”</p><p class="p1">Poe shrugged as he helped the tiny cat drink from the bottle. These moments melted her heart—she loved getting to see Poe be such a gentle soul, and the fact that she now got to have some of that affection directed towards herself was a lovely thought.</p><p class="p1">“So,” Rey said, sitting back down on the bed. “What should we do today?”</p><p class="p1">“A lazy Sunday sounds great,” Poe answered, setting the kitten down and getting his own cup of tea. “We could watch more <em>Avatar?</em>”</p><p class="p1">“Sounds good to me.”</p><p class="p1">They made themselves a comfortable nest on the bed, burrowing under the blankets as they set the laptop between them. Rey smiled to herself as she relished the feeling of getting to finally cuddle into Poe’s chest, his fingers lazily running through her hair.</p><p class="p1">“I have some news,” Poe said. “I caught up with some things, and I’m going to have a memorial service for my dad in two weeks.”</p><p class="p1">“Poe,” she said, squeezing his hand. “That’s a huge deal.”</p><p class="p1">“It is.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m proud of you,” Rey said. “I know it’s been hard for you to face, but you did it.”</p><p class="p1">“I guess I did,” he responded. “It’s going to be at a church pretty close to here, the one we went to when we lived here in Connecticut when I was little. There’s a few relatives and old family friends coming in. It’ll be small, but hopefully pretty nice.”</p><p class="p1">Rey smiled. “It’ll be good for you to see some people who were close to your parents.”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” he said. “And I want you to be there too, of course—if you want to.”</p><p class="p1">“Of course I want to come,” Rey said. “You’ll do a great job, Poe. I’m sure of it.”</p><p class="p1">They cuddled close together and pressed play on the laptop, leaning back and waiting for Prince Zuko to tell his tragic backstory. As they watched, Rey was reminded that she hadn’t exactly revealed <em>her</em> tragic backstory yet, either—and now that she and Poe were together, that was probably something she should get out of the way.</p><p class="p1">“Hey,” she said, closing the laptop as the episode ended. “Can I talk to you about some things?”</p><p class="p1">“Sure,” Poe said, pulling her back into his arms. “What’s up?”</p><p class="p1">“Well,” she said. “First of all I wanted to thank you…for not asking too many questions about my situation. I’ve had instances in the past where people have demanded answers; and unless I gave them right away, they wanted nothing to do with me. It’s not an easy thing for me to talk about, and it was nice of you to befriend me even when you knew nothing about my past or how I got here. But I want to tell you now.”</p><p class="p1">Poe nodded, listening attentively.</p><p class="p1">“I grew up in a bad home,” Rey said, nervously fiddling with her hands. “A really bad home. When I was eleven I couldn’t take it anymore, and I just ran. No one reported me missing—they didn’t even look for me.”</p><p class="p1">She felt Poe hold her tighter, as if he was trying to shield her against the world.</p><p class="p1">“I walked for three days, sleeping in toolsheds and treehouses, living off of granola bars…and then I found this place,” she said, on the verge of tears. “It felt like a miracle. And day by day, I made the cottage my own, and I figured things out. I built a home for myself, and I survived.”</p><p class="p1">“You’re strong,” Poe said, kissing her forehead. “I knew it from the moment I met you.”</p><p class="p1">“I went to school, too,” Rey continued. “I started middle school that year and eventually got my high school diploma. It wasn’t easy, though. It was seven long years of doing all my online homework at the library after classes were over, and there was never money for field trips or anything like that. I couldn’t really have friends—not real ones. What would I say when they wanted to come over? Or if they wanted to go shopping or out for food and I couldn’t afford anything? It was just…it was simpler to keep to myself.”</p><p class="p1">She was crying now, and Poe held her tight as she finished her story, crying into his shoulder.</p><p class="p1">“I’m sorry,” she said, talking through her tears. “I’m getting so emotional, I should—”</p><p class="p1">“No, no, hey,” Poe said, rocking her back and forth. “You don’t have to be alone anymore,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head as she cried. “Not ever again.”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p1">Despite another one of Poe’s many protests concerning accidental poisoning, Rey had left five minutes ago to go foraging for mushrooms for their dinner, leaving Poe behind to play with the kittens on the floor.</p><p class="p1">This was the best mood he’d been in since everything happened. He had always longed to reach out to Rey for comfort, but there had always been boundaries, delicate lines woven over their growing relationship that had prevented him from being able to feel completely like himself around her. But now those things were gone—he had woken up to her this morning, soft and lovely in his arms, smiling at him; and for the first time in weeks, he felt like there were reasons for looking toward tomorrow.</p><p class="p1">There was a tiny meow, and Poe watched as the smallest cat, who they had simply started referring to as “the devilish one” (or D.O., for short) disappeared under the bed. Despite being tiny and a bit shy, he still somehow managed to get into more mischief than all of his brothers and sisters combined.</p><p class="p1">“Come here, little guy,” Poe whispered, ducking down under the bed. “I swear buddy, you’re gonna be the death of me.”</p><p class="p1">He picked up D.O. and deposited him safely back next to his mom, sneezing from the dust under the bed. As Poe sat back up, his hand moved against one of the floorboards, and he discovered it was loose.</p><p class="p1">“Aha,” Poe told the kittens. “See, I bet this is how that spider got in the other day, huh?”</p><p class="p1">Although he knew Rey was perfectly capable (and certainly more capable than him) of handling handiwork around the cottage, he thought it might be nice to fix this one thing for her.</p><p class="p1">Poe found the toolbox under the sink and pulled out a hammer and some nails, bringing them over near the bed. He lifted up the floorboard first to reposition it, and—</p><p class="p1">There was definitely something under there. Was it something of Rey’s, or had it been here long before she had made the cottage her home?</p><p class="p1">Poe pulled out a box, a tarnished metal one that certainly looked older than himself, with yellow daisies hand-painted around the edges. He wasn’t a snoop; he wouldn’t do that to Rey, but something about the way the flowers were painted pulled at something buried deep inside his mind, something familiar, and he found himself lifting the lid anyway.</p><p class="p1">He was shocked to see his dad’s handwriting staring back at him.</p><p class="p1">He lifted up a pile of notes—love notes, from his father to his mother, notes from long before he was born that he had never seen. His eyes teared up at the sight of his dad’s scrawl, the x’s and o’s and poetry clippings, the <em>darling, beautiful Shara, you are so alive, so full of spirit, that sometimes I think I was dead before I met you…</em></p><p class="p1">There was a journal, purple leather, filled with a slightly more juvenile version of his mother’s handwriting, and his eyes watered and blurred, skimming over <em>Kes kissed me after our date tonight and I was so giddy from it that I was sure Mama could tell </em>and <em>I won the track medal and me and the girls all went for ice cream sundaes after…</em></p><p class="p1">Poe tore through the contents of the box, his mind racing for an explanation. There were ribbons and trophies, a doll in a blue lace dress, a stack of concert tickets.</p><p class="p1">There were photos…photos Poe had never seen. His mother, a beautiful mess at the hospital as she held him in her arms for the first time…Kes kissing Shara on the cheek as a tiny, curly-haired Poe peeked out from a crib in the background…and a picture of Shara holding him as a baby, in—</p><p class="p1">No. That wasn’t possible.</p><p class="p1">But it <em>was.</em> In the background of the photo was indisputably the room he was currently sitting in, the same calico curtains, the same furniture, even the bowl on the kitchen table.</p><p class="p1">He lifted out another love note from his father, <em>I built this for you, only you, so you can escape somewhere, so you can have a place all alone…</em></p><p class="p1">The box, the daisies—they were the same daisies that Shara had painted on some of their Christmas ornaments, the ones they still hung on their tree, now in ashes. They were the same. These were <em>her </em>things. This had been <em>her </em>cottage. Shara had brought him here when he was too young to remember. And the box wasn’t rusted shut, it wasn’t dusty. It had been opened, and recently.</p><p class="p1">Rey knew.</p><p class="p1">Poe sat back, tears running down his cheeks as he looked through the box, suddenly missing his dad so much that he felt like his heart was collapsing in.</p><p class="p1">The key turned in the door, and Rey came in, all smiles as she carried in two huge bags of mushrooms. “I got some good morels under this tree, and—”</p><p class="p1">Her gaze stopped as she saw the open box sitting on the ground.</p><p class="p1">“Why would you keep this from me?” Poe asked, his voice shaking. “You knew? All this time I’ve been hurting, and you <em>knew?”</em></p><p class="p1">She froze, setting the mushrooms on the table, and tried her best to get the words out. “I know, and I was going to tell you, and then we kissed, and I was so scared of ruining things, and…”</p><p class="p1">“Rey, why?”</p><p class="p1">“It’s complicated,” she said sternly. “I’m afraid…I was afraid you wouldn’t understand.”</p><p class="p1">Poe wiped away more tears with his hand. “Understand what? Try me.”</p><p class="p1">Rey stood silently, not able to bring herself to speak. The box of Shara’s things lay spread out on the floor, an open wound between them.</p><p class="p1">“Did you think I would find it weird that the house used to be my mom’s? Or that I’d claim it as my own again and try to kick you out? Was that it?”</p><p class="p1">“No, it’s weird, and stupid, and—”</p><p class="p1">Poe took a deep breath and stood up, hurt burning behind his eyes. “Do you know how much I’ve wanted to look at old photographs of my parents these past few weeks? After all of mine got destroyed? What it would have meant to me?”</p><p class="p1">Rey looked down quietly, ashamed.</p><p class="p1">“And they were, quite literally, right under my head the entire time,” Poe said angrily, shaking his head. “And all those nights when I was crying, and you were comforting me, you never thought to say anything?”</p><p class="p1">Rey stood frozen, watching helplessly as Poe picked up his pajamas and his small bag of toiletries and went to the door.</p><p class="p1">“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m going to crash with Rose and Finn. I just…I need to be alone right now.”</p><p class="p1">Rey tried to lift up the stack of photographs to hand to him, but the door was already closed.</p><p class="p1">He was gone.</p><p>
  
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  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  
</p><p class="p1">Rey had almost forgotten what the cottage sounded like in total silence.</p><p class="p1">She woke up when it was still dark Monday morning, Shara’s box of treasures still open on the floor. Bea and the kittens were still asleep, snuggled together on the pile of crochet blankets. It was too still, too different from how she had woken up yesterday, safe and happy with Poe’s arms around her.</p><p class="p1">The quiet hurt.</p><p class="p1">It was a constant reminder of how stupid she had been, how selfish, how she had managed to ruin the first real connection she’d had with someone in years…</p><p class="p1">She crawled out of bed and stumbled over to the hot plate in the dim morning light, filling the kettle for her tea. She had a long day of work at the grocery store ahead of her, and all she could do was hope that Poe would come back to the cottage this evening and at least let her have a chance to explain herself.</p><p class="p1">D.O. let out a soft meow in the corner of the room, and Rey watched as he waddled around the floor, looking everywhere.</p><p class="p1">“He’s not here, buddy,” Rey said, scratching his little head. “I’m sorry.”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p1">Poe still went back to Rose and Finn’s place after work.</p><p class="p1">“You should go back and talk to her,” Rose said. “I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t know,” Poe said, picking at the elegant roast beef Rose had put together—as good as it was, he found himself missing the bright orange macaroni and cheese from the cottage. “I just don’t understand why she wouldn’t tell me.”</p><p class="p1">Finn, Rose’s boyfriend, looked over at him sympathetically. “From what I know about her, it sounds like her life has been pretty hard. She may have had some reason for keeping those things from you that isn’t easy to explain.”</p><p class="p1">“And,” Rose said. “You were grieving<em>—</em>you lost both a father and your home in the space of a few weeks. Perhaps she thought knowing the cottage used to be your mother’s and seeing her things might actually upset you more.”</p><p class="p1">“I guess,” Poe said, but he wasn’t sure. The entire day had felt like a blur, his mind so overwhelmed by the complex mixture of emotions the box had brought out that he didn’t even know what to feel—he was just numb.</p><p class="p1">Rose reached over to squeeze his hand. “I could tell how crazy you were about her at the restaurant the other day,” she said, smiling up at him hopefully. “Don’t throw away something great over a misunderstanding.”</p><p class="p1">Poe sighed. “Maybe I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”</p><p class="p1">“No,” Rose said decisively. “You’re gonna go over and talk to her tonight.”</p><p class="p1">“Nah, I think maybe I’ll—”</p><p class="p1">Rose walked to the door and kicked it open, a mischievous smirk on her face. “Too bad, because I’m kicking you out.”</p><p class="p1">Finn sighed. “Rosie, just let him—”</p><p class="p1">“NOPE! Bye-bye Poe!”</p><p class="p1">Poe groaned and got up out of his chair. “Fine.”</p><p class="p1">“It’s for your own good, buddy,” Rose said, patting him aggressively on the back. “Now go and get your girl back.”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p1">Poe stood in front of the cottage door, waiting a moment before he knocked.</p><p class="p1">He’d been miserable all day. Angry, and sad, and angry that he <em>was </em>sad. He hated leaving Rey, at leaving their relationship on the edge of a cliff; but when he’d found the box of his mother’s things the sense of betrayal and shock was just too much to bear. He had always thought of Rey as his escape from grief, a person who could help him find peace and move forward, and so to find that she was so intimately connected to all that he had lost had left him without words—without answers.</p><p class="p1">He knocked, and Rey came to the door.</p><p class="p1">She looked exhausted, and slightly shocked to see him standing before her.</p><p class="p1">“You’re back,” she said flatly. “I wasn’t sure if—”</p><p class="p1">Poe reached forward and took her hand, rushing to explain. “Rey—I’m sorry, I should have given you a chance to explain before storming out like that, I—”</p><p class="p1">“No, I’m the one who should be sorry,” she said, letting Poe in and closing the door. “I’ve known for ages, and I should have told you the second I realized who you were…but I can explain now, if you’ll let me.”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah, of course,” Poe said, sitting down at the table, and he watched Rey set the kettle on, placing two chamomile tea bags into chipped tea cups.</p><p class="p1">“These tea cups,” Rey started, looking down shyly. “They were your mother’s, I assume. And so are most of the things in this house—when I came here everything was still fully furnished. All of her things were here.”</p><p class="p1">Poe looked down at the floor, doing the calculations in his head. “Ten years ago…that would have been shortly after she died…and I suppose my father could never bring himself to come back here,” he said.</p><p class="p1">Rey nodded and poured the tea, and he waited in silence.</p><p class="p1">“I was eleven when I found this place,” she continued. “My mother never—well, she never acted like a mother. And I didn’t have any friends. I was completely alone here, young and confused, with no idea of how to find my way in the world.”</p><p class="p1">Rey walked over to the box, still open on the floor, and pulled out the purple journal.</p><p class="p1">“And then I met your mom,” she said, running a hand reverently over the cover. “I read her journal, and she became like a big sister to me. She was the only friend I had when I was out here in the woods, young and all by myself…”</p><p class="p1">Poe watched as she flipped through the pages, smiling, and suddenly he understood. “I didn’t think of it like that,” he said.</p><p class="p1">Rey walked over to him and handed him the journal. “I loved her writing—her stories. I fell in love with her spirit; the stories about your father wooing her when they were teenagers—and then I began to adore him too.”</p><p class="p1">“That’s…that’s amazing, Rey,” he said, putting down his teacup.</p><p class="p1">“The reason I didn’t tell you,” she said, biting her lip. “Is because your mom, her ghost, was everything to me when I had nothing, and I got…possessive of her. I was afraid you’d somehow—I don’t know, revoke my right to her because I had never actually met her and she’s your mother and I—”</p><p class="p1">Poe leaned in and kissed her. “Rey…”</p><p class="p1">She leaned her forehead against his. “So you forgive me?”</p><p class="p1">“Sweetheart,” he said, putting his arms around her. “Do you know how amazing that is to me?” He looked up at her with wide eyes. “To hear that someone else loves and appreciates my mother the way my dad did, the way I do—that’s…it’s incredible.”</p><p class="p1">“Really?”</p><p class="p1">“Really,” Poe said, holding her hand and letting his fingers brush over the knuckles. “The hardest thing about losing my family—something that I hadn’t been prepared for—was the loss of people to share all the memories with. I’m the only one left who remembers what it was like to live in my house growing up. I used to think I was the only one who remembered my mom, but—”</p><p class="p1">Rey rested her head on his shoulder. “I remember.”</p><p class="p1">“My mom had enough love in her for the both of us,” he said. “And she would have adored you, by the way.”</p><p class="p1">“And she would of been proud of you,” Rey added, looking up at him with tears in her eyes.</p><p class="p1">They took the items out of the box, setting them on the windowsill one by one; artifacts from the history of Shara, of the cottage, of the history of them. After checking on the kittens, they snuggled into bed together, safe and warm again—and somewhere, far away, they could both sense someone smiling.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <b>Two Weeks Later</b>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">Poe walked up to the microphone next to the altar, a lump in his throat as he tried to clear the emotions out of his system, as he tried to calm down. He could cry later—right now he had a duty to his dad—one last thing he could do for him.</p><p class="p1">He looked out into the pews, where thirty or so people had gathered, more than he was expecting. It turned out his father had more friends than he had ever known about, some of them even flying in from across the country. He saw his dad’s friends from college, some second cousins, and a few members of the church that he recognized. In the front row he noticed his father’s lawyer, William Tarkin, sitting next to his parents old friends, Han Solo and Leia Organa, who had moved to California years ago and had flown in for the occasion.</p><p class="p1">And of course, there was Rey, watching him solemnly from the front row, looking at him encouragingly as he began to read the eulogy from the piece of paper in his hands.</p><p class="p1">“Hi,” he said. “I’m Poe Dameron. I was Kes’s—I <em>am</em> Kes’s son, and Shara Bey’s son, and I first wanted to thank you for being here with me today.”</p><p class="p1">The congregation nodded at him approvingly, and he continued. “I’ve had a lot of people, over the past month, and ever since my mother died, really, tell me how sorry they are for me…how much they pity me. I think most people, if they heard a summary of my life, if they saw me standing here at twenty-two years old with dead parents and burned-down house, would consider me to be extremely unfortunate.”</p><p class="p1">“But the thing is,” Poe said. “I’m not. I’m not unfortunate at all. I think, despite all of this, I still might be one of the luckiest people on earth. I may have lost more than most people, but to lose something, you have to have something first—and I had so, so much.”</p><p class="p1">“I got to grow up with two parents who were sickeningly in love. High school sweethearts who wrote each other love notes and giggled at each other like teenagers even when they were forty. And it wasn’t that they were soulmates, star-crossed, anything like that—that’s not the secret—it’s never <em>been</em> the secret.”</p><p class="p1">“The secret,” Poe said, stealing a quick glance at Rey. “Is creating that love yourself. In taking someone’s hand and deciding together that you’re going to adore each other with all that you have. My parents taught me that, and that was how they loved me, too. They loved me so deeply that I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling it.”</p><p class="p1">Poe took a deep, shaky breath as he held the paper in his sweaty hands, and tried not to cry.</p><p class="p1">“As long as you’ve shown kindness to another person, as long as you’ve loved someone, you can never really <em>be </em>gone—at least that’s what I think. I see my parents everywhere,” he read, looking out at the congregation in front of him, his gaze once again lingering on Rey. “Even in the most surprising places. I wouldn’t be surprised if I spent the rest of my life finding traces of them.”</p><p class="p1">“My dad was a romantic in every sense of the word. He was brave, but sensitive; thoughtful, and funny. He made friends everywhere he went. He fought for good causes—I would even say he was a little bit of a rebel,” Poe said, and the room laughed. “You can call him a lot of things, I suppose, and he’s something different to every one of us in this room…but to me he’s my dad. He’s the guy who did funny impersonations at the dinner table and used a plastic sword to slay monsters under my bed. He was the man who bought my mom flowers every week and took her dancing, and the man who stayed up with me watching cartoons when I couldn’t sleep after she died. He was my best friend, and I don’t know what I’m going to do without him. I’m never going to stop missing him.”</p><p class="p1">He took a deep breath, his eyes watering as he stared down at the final paragraph. <em>One to go, now hold yourself together.</em></p><p class="p1">“But as I said earlier,” Poe read. “I’m lucky. I had the two best parents a kid could have, and nothing can ever change that. And now all I can do is try to make them proud, and to do my best to love the people in my life as much as they loved me.”</p><p class="p1">Poe exhaled and folded up the piece of paper, walking down from the altar to stand in the pew next to Rey as the pianist started up another hymn.</p><p class="p1">“That was amazing,” Rey whispered, squeezing his hand.</p><p class="p1">“I couldn’t have done it without you.”</p><p class="p1">“Poe, I literally corrected like, two typos.”</p><p class="p1">“No,” he said, smiling down at her. “I wasn’t talking about the typos.”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p1">There was a reception afterwards in an empty room next door, and Poe and Rey busied themselves with unpacking the food: the vegetable trays and cheap cookies and instant coffee. People gathered in groups, talking and catching up, and once the food was ready Poe had no idea where to turn.</p><p class="p1">“Young Mr. Dameron!” came a voice from behind him, and Poe turned around to see William Tarkin, his dad’s lawyer. “That was an amazing eulogy you gave. Stupendous. You had me in tears.”</p><p class="p1">“Thanks.”</p><p class="p1">”And I’m about to have <em>you</em> in tears too.”</p><p class="p1">“Pardon?”</p><p class="p1">“Well, I’ve been looking over your dad’s affairs, and it turns out he had pretty good homeowner’s insurance. You might be in a better place than you thought in terms of finances.”</p><p class="p1">“Wow,” Poe said, so absorbed by the news that he didn’t even notice when a baby carrot rolled off his paper plate and onto the floor. “Really?”</p><p class="p1">“Absolutely,” Tarkin said. “I’ll set up a meeting with you next week.”</p><p class="p1">“That…that would be great,” he said.</p><p class="p1">“And speaking of your financial situation, a little birdie told me that your parent’s friends over there have a proposal for you as well.”</p><p class="p1">As Tarkin left he gestured over to Han Solo and Leia Organa, who were sipping plastic cups of iced tea by the drink table. Poe hadn’t seen either of them in years, probably not since his mother was alive. As far as he knew, they were extremely wealthy, with a vineyard in California as well as an impressive assortment of Silicon Valley startups.</p><p class="p1">“Thank you for coming,” Poe said as he approached them. “It was very kind of you to fly all the way here from the west coast. My dad would have appreciated it.”</p><p class="p1">“Of course, son,” Han said, patting him affectionately on the shoulder. “We wanted to check in on you—and we’re very pleased to see you’ve grown up into such a fine young man.”</p><p class="p1">Leia leaned in to give him a hug. “I know Kes and Shara never had much in the way of extended family, and we were so worried about you dealing with this alone,” she said. “We don’t want you to ever hesitate to ask if you need anything, okay?”</p><p class="p1">“Thank you,” Poe said. “That’s very kind.”</p><p class="p1">“Now,” Leia said, a gleam in her eyes. “I was terribly sorry to hear about your house. Han and I had tried to buy that property off of your parents god knows how many times.”</p><p class="p1">“Really?”</p><p class="p1">“Yes,” Leia said. “And to be honest, we still want it. We’ve been thinking about moving back to the east coast for a while, and the land is wonderful—we’d build a new house and have a fresh start. We’d pay you an extremely generous price for it, I promise.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh,” Poe said, stepping back, and Leia watched his face carefully.</p><p class="p1">“Is there a problem?” she asked. “You surely don’t mean to keep that huge property for yourself, and then of course to spend all that money rebuilding?”</p><p class="p1">“You’re a handsome man who needs a bachelor pad,” Han said, and Leia nodded.</p><p class="p1">“Um,” Poe said, watching Rey talk to an old lady across the room. “I…I’ll have to think about it.”</p><p class="p1">Leia smiled and looked over, nothing escaping her. “It has to do with that girl over there, doesn’t it?”</p><p class="p1">He couldn’t resist a small smile as Han and Leia smirked at each other. “How do you two feel about spending time in nature?”</p><p class="p1">Leia scoffed. “Hate it. The both of us.”</p><p class="p1">Poe smiled. “Good. Then we might be able to come to an arrangement…”</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p3">***</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p1">Rey sat on the steps outside, watching the sun set behind the church. She could hear the quiet murmur of people leaving behind her, the guests offering their condolences to Poe and hugging him on their way out.</p><p class="p1">She could already see the change in him. Before today Rey had always gotten the sense from Poe that he believed himself to be completely alone in the world—but he wasn’t. All sorts of people had come out of the woodwork today to be with him, to make sure the young man knew he was loved and had people to lean on. He didn’t look like he was so lost anymore.</p><p class="p1">The last guests had finally left, and Poe stacked the leftover food on the curb next to her and sat down. He looked both at peace and exhausted after what must have been an emotional day.</p><p class="p1">“Hey,” she said, reaching out for his hand. “You did it.”</p><p class="p1">“I did,” Poe said, looking out at the empty parking lot. “But now it’s done, isn’t it?”</p><p class="p1">“What’s done?”</p><p class="p1">“The grief, I suppose. This is where I’m supposed to stop missing him and get on with my life. No more excuses.”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t believe that,” Rey said. “It doesn’t sound like you or your dad ever stopped missing your mom—we never stop missing people. They just become a part of our lives in a different way.”</p><p class="p1">“I guess you’re right,” Poe said. “That’s a nice way of thinking about it.”</p><p class="p1">“I forgot to mention, did you find anyone who wants the fourth kitten yet?” Rey asked, and Poe shook his head.</p><p class="p1">“Good,” Rey continued. “Because I have an idea.”</p><p class="p1">His eyes lit up with excitement. “We’re keeping D.O.!?”</p><p class="p1">She grinned, knowing that Poe was dreading being separated from the little guy. “If it’s okay with you.”</p><p class="p1">“Absolutely.”</p><p class="p1">“So I guess we’re a family of four now,” Rey said, and they giggled at the idea.</p><p class="p1">They sat there in the quiet of the twilight, her head on his shoulder, watching as fireflies lit up and disappeared into the nearby trees; and finally, it seemed like the world was on their side.</p><p>
  
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<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <b>
    
  </b>
</p><p class="p1">
  <b>Three Months Later</b>
</p><p class="p1">“Look, look!” Rey said excitedly as they walked up the stone pathway to the cottage. “The squash is up!”</p><p class="p1">“Ah,” Poe said, nodding in agreement even though, as far as he could tell, the squash looked exactly the same as it had last weekend.</p><p class="p1">“I can’t tell if it was more fun to watch the plants day by day or if I like the surprise of seeing what happened during the week,” she noted, opening the door and putting down her duffel bag. Rey always had a certain sort of glow about her when they returned to the cottage on Saturday mornings, as if her energy came from being in her natural environment.</p><p class="p1">A lot had changed in the last few months, most of it due to Han and Leia’s generosity. They had bought the property from Poe, on the condition that Rey would still have full use of the cottage. He couldn’t bear to see the place that meant so much to both her and his mother taken away from her, and the Organa-Solos were happy to oblige his request.</p><p class="p1">With the money from the sale and the insurance, Poe had rented an apartment, one that he and Rey were sharing. It was conveniently placed right in-between both Poe’s new job and the University of Connecticut, where Rey would start as a biology major next week, thanks to her winning entry to the JEDI scholarship. Her dedication and enthusiasm for her work had won the judges over easily.</p><p class="p1">Now that they could afford a “proper” apartment, and because of their need to be close to school and work, Sunflower Cottage had become a purely recreational affair. They went nearly every weekend to enjoy the peace and quiet, Rey enjoying time with her garden, and Poe enjoying their get-togethers with Finn and Rose and the Organa-Solos. It was a nice house to spend a weekend in, but of course they both enjoyed living in their apartment during the week, with the luxuries of electric lighting, a shower, and a refrigerator.</p><p class="p1">But Sunflower Cottage was still home. And it would always be waiting for them.</p><p class="p1">“What do you think Bea and D.O. get up to when we’re away?” Rey asked, getting out Shara’s old china for them to eat their take-out food on. “I always liked the idea of bringing them with us one weekend. I wonder if they miss this place.”</p><p class="p1">Poe laughed. “If you want to try getting D.O. into that cat carrier again, that’s on you.”</p><p class="p1">Rey scrunched her nose. “Good point.”</p><p class="p1">She was right, though. The cottage didn’t quite feel the same without the tiny meows echoing off the walls, but he figured that the cats would prefer not to be lugged across town every week.</p><p class="p1">Rey set up their dinner on the old card table by the window, and they watched as autumn leaves made their way down to the forest floor. The cottage was just as gorgeous in the fall as it had been in the summer, and he knew Rey missed sitting here each day and watching the New England forest change into a rainbow of colors before her eyes—but of course he remembered how she had struggled to keep warm during the winters, how hard she said they were, and he knew she was happy with this new arrangement.</p><p class="p1">“What a year,” he said, staring at a cardinal out the window. “For both of us. I don’t think we could have imagined any of this a year ago.”</p><p class="p1">“No,” Rey said, smiling at him. “It was hard, but…I like how thing are now.”</p><p class="p1">“Me too,” he agreed.</p><p class="p1">And he really did. Change had come into his life like a whirlwind, obliterating everything he knew in a wildfire of destruction—there were times when he thought everything he had to live for was gone, was far behind him. But then he met a girl who had started with nothing, an empty flower bed, and had grown a magnificent life out of it; a girl who stood as tall and radiant as a sunflower despite the odds.</p><p class="p1">She taught him to love everything. She taught him to love the wildflowers that grew between cracks in the concrete, an especially good apple, the funny expressions on the face of a kitten…</p><p class="p1">And <em>god,</em> did he love her.</p><p class="p1">His world was so much wider now, thanks to this woman who had learned to build her own happiness with what little she had. And no matter how young they were, no matter what happened, that was something he’d always take with him.</p><p class="p1">And Poe took his dad with him, too. The grief took up a smaller area as the weeks went on, but it was still there—and he knew it would never really leave. But now instead of thinking of his dad’s passing, the pain it brought, he was reminded of him in the kindest and most surprising ways. He found himself thinking of his dad when his favorite song played in the grocery store, or what he’d say about Rey’s expression after Poe made an especially bad pun.</p><p class="p1">He thought a lot about what it would have been like to bring home Rey—Kes opening his arms in a massive hug, the way he would tease Poe the whole time, saying that she was way out of his league. But it would have to remain a daydream.</p><p class="p1">Poe stood up to clear the dishes and wash them off in the sink as Rey sat herself down on the bed. It was still neatly made from last weekend, when it had rained buckets and they’d spent the entire two days underneath the covers, blissfully lost in each other.</p><p class="p1">He laid down on the bed, wrapping his arms around her as they enjoyed the moment, as they remembered how much had changed, all of the strange circumstances that bound them together and had finally brought them to each other.</p><p class="p1">Poe’s eyelids began to droop as he cuddled his head into Rey’s shoulder. “Will you read me something?”</p><p class="p1">“If you like,” Rey said, and reached down toward the stack of books she still kept by the bed. Poe closed his eyes as she began to read, and he relaxed at the sound of her voice.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <em>“Nature’s first green is gold,</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Her hardest hue to hold.</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Her early leaf’s a flower;</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>But only so an hour.</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Then leaf subsides to leaf.</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>So Eden sank to grief,</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>So dawn goes down to day.</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Nothing gold can stay.”</em>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">“Do you think that’s true?” Poe asked, turning to her. “Does everything we love go away in the end?”</p><p class="p1">“I suppose so,” Rey said, running her hands gently through his hair. “But it’s not accounting for the whole of the truth, I think.”</p><p class="p1">Poe laughed. “And what is that?”</p><p class="p1">Rey smiled knowingly. “There’s always more gold somewhere else.”</p><p class="p1">He gazed into her eyes and thought the matter over. Thought of his mother’s painted daisies and his father’s empanadas…and then he thought of tall sunflowers, processed macaroni and cheese, the small sparkle of amber in hazel eyes…</p><p class="p1">There was so much gold ahead.</p><p>
  
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The poem Rey reads is is "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by the wonderful Robert Frost: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148652/nothing-gold-can-stay-5c095cc5ab679</p><p>Thank you all for reading and commenting! Writing this story helped me work through some grief issues of my own so I appreciated hearing all of your thoughts. </p><p>I have a modern Emma AU coming in a few days (which I promise will be a lot more uplifting and fun) so look out for that soon! ;)</p>
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